


Crashing to Earth:  When Alien Bioweapons, Freshman Parties and the Justice League Collide

by alephthirteen



Category: DCU (Comics), Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alex Obeys the Geneva Conventions, Alien Biology, Alien Technology, BAMF Alex, Bat Family Hijinks, Bat Family Intervention Ahead, Bisexual Space Pirates!, Buff Kara Danvers, Domestic Kara/Lena, Domestic Sam, Domestic Sam/Kara/Lena, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, F/M, Fluff, GAY-ASS Weddings, Gentlewoman Kara Danvers, Happy Ending, How Did the CW Miss That?, Imagine Terry Crews as Jimmy, Jimmy Olsen Loves Love, Kate Kane Has Ruby Rose Level Tattoo Game, Kate Kane Is Exasperated Mom to the Bat-Family, Kate Kane and Her Motorcyle Are An OTP, Kate Kane is Jewish, Lena Has A Female Middle Name Now, Lena Has Some Questions For Her Family, Lena Is A Hippy-Dippy Boss Like In Silicon Valley, Lena Is Weak For Women Speaking In Her Mother Tongue, Lena Is Working On Her Issues So She Will Probably Have The Most Tags, Lena Knows The Difference Between Evil And Traumatized, Lena Speaks Gaeilge (Irish) Even Though I Do Not So Blame Google Translate for Any Weirdness, Lena's Irish Birth Mother Is From Katie McGrath's Home Town, M/M, Maggie Sawyer Should Just Be Italian Like the Actress Was, Married Throuple, More Confident Alex, Multi, Multiple Pov, No Children of Liberty Here, Nonbinary Character, Not Inside The House Please Kara, Pansexual Kara Danvers, Physics Still Exists It Just Got Moved, Protective Samantha "Sam" Arias, Races and Technologies Stolen from Other Places For a Good Cause, Racists Do Not Get Backstory Episodes On My Watch, Raising kids, Ruby Arias is a Smart Little Shit, Sanvers - Freeform, Soldier Alex, Spooky Action At A Distance, SuperCorp, SuperReignCorp, Thirsty Batwoman, Throuple, Vigilante Kara Danvers, WARNING: Mention of Hate Crimes/Harassment, WARNING: Mentions of Brainwashing, WARNING: Mentions of Donald Trump, We Don't Trade Winn for Mon-El, Winn is Great, Woke Kara Danvers, Worldkillers Just Need Somebody to Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2019-11-12 14:27:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 44
Words: 262,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18012629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alephthirteen/pseuds/alephthirteen
Summary: "I'm Kara."Winn is not sure how to deal with the fact this woman exists. She looks like someone blended the cutest parts of the Disney princesses – at least if Disney had the balls to have black girls be princesses – and put them through puberty.Her eyes are big and golden, drawing his focus up to her ebony face even though she’s a foot taller than he is. She’s long-limbed and those acid-washed jeans hang around her hips like they're glad for the invite.  Hard to say if she wore the shirt to show off her abs or her breasts.  She flicks some lint off her hand her triceps jump out.  A thick braid of curly silver hair falls all the way down her back, tied off in three places with blue ribbons.If he was straight, he would be making a huge ass of himself.---They are face to face with a red-haired woman with a close-cropped haircut that looks like early sexy Elvis, pistols on each thigh and both the stock of a rifle and the handle of a baton sticking out behind her back.  Phil wonders for a moment how much he would have to beg to go back to just chasing the Taliban. That woman's smirk is scary.“I am Operative Alex Danvers. For the remainder of this mission, your asses are mine. We clear?”





	1. Pod People

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This story will take place in what we'll call Earth-38 & 1/2 in the multiverse where the rest of the Justice League is present.  Kara also lands a few years earlier, in 2002.  Her pod entered the solar system in January 2001 and slowed as it neared the Earth, in essence making the Girl of Tomorrow the Girl of the Third Millennium.  I wanted to let her play with some politicians, so look for her giving sage advice regarding birth certificates, going door to door for some of my faves, believing survivors, flying high when others go low and persisting no matter who warns her to shut up.
> 
> It's a place where not all Kryptonians are white and blonde, Kara is trying really hard, her dad was an mad scientist, her mom meant well, Eliza is fierce, Alex is protective, Winn is gay, Kara gets woke, Kara never is not someone's hero, CADMUS is sinister, the DEO is not a CIA torture site and people do things for some reason rather than "because the episode needs five more minutes".
> 
> We begin our tale as all good tales begin : with a mad scientist father, a dorky robot with a funny face, a monster in the basement, a spaceship and finishing secret projects...before our heroine finishes her homework and noses around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ### GEOGRAPHY NOTES:
> 
>   
> Places that actually exist will be Google Mapped and worked into their settings as best as possible. Made up cities like Gotham or Metropolis and made up nations like Kasnia or Kandaq are exempt.
> 
> For example, there is a National City, California, a former railroad town not far from San Diego. It will *be* the LA-ish sized city we see in the CW show for our purposes.  
> 
> 
> ### TIMELINE NOTES:
> 
>   
> The interplay of Kara's political situation and her life is important to this and I wanted to use real politicians up through 2020 so we will (briefly) encounter the Bush/Obama/Trump presidencies which will be bumbling, awesome and the comic relief villian in the third act, respectively. Lois Lane, prize winning and vicious investigative reporter and proud owner of one thoroughly whipped superhero, will use her wits and his reach to help keep things honest.
> 
> Presidential events will occur in approximately the same timeframe **relative to the adminstration**. In other words, when George W. Bush resigns and Obama takes over in 2006, we have events that happened in 2011 happening in 2009, so on. So, move those highlights forward three years, because you deserve it!
> 
> The technology from our period (smartphones, Twitter, etc.) will be available early in the story even though the iPhone wasn't invented until 2007 and we start in 2002. Let's be real...Kara needs her #foodporn selfies.  
> 
> 
> ### STYLE GUIDE:
> 
>   
> Italics in quotes (i.e. out loud) is foreign languages.  
> Italics are thoughts/observations.  
> Brackets [ ] are interactions with artificial intelligences and cybernetics.  
> Bold and block-quoted passages are recorded messages, songs or poems.
> 
> ### READER'S GUIDE:
> 
> Updated daily (or almost) and re-edited when errors are detected so you may need to check the second-to-last chapter more than once as I add scenes.
> 
> The last chapter will be the Codex of world-building information which I will try to keep amusing  
> 
> 
> ### SPONSORS:
> 
> This program thanks our sponsors, which include American Public Media,  
> ...The Society to Promote Women In Space  
> ...The Jessica Huang Association of Office Workers and their "Campaign to Save Lena Luthor's Goddamned Sanity Already!"  
> ...The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Alien Pets who remind you "Venom sacs can be drained. Love should be for life."  
> ...The Denim Jacket Manufacturer's Association who remind you that "Denim is SUPER comfy!"  
> ...Flying Saucers, voted National City's Favorite Pizza Joint five years running  
> ...Themysciran Dairy Confections, LLC and it's chairwoman, Diana Prince, who invite you to grab a spoon and "Snack like an Amazon."  
> ...and our primary sponsor the Organization for the Promotion of Lena Luthor's Happiness.  
> 
> 
> ### RATINGS:
> 
> This product may contain scenes with the following:  
> * Kara is good with the science.  
> * Kara is teaching Alex alien languages just for funsies.  
> * Kara is aware that racism exists.  
> * Kara is not taking that shit lying down.  
> * Alex is a soldier.  
> * Alex knows six ways to kill a man with bubble gum.  
> * Alex is picked for her skills, not her sister.  
> * Alex is in the closet. WARNING: Closet under pressure. Stand clear of door.  
> * Gays who are shy and sad.  
> * Gays who swagger.  
> * Gays who cry.  
> * Sassy space pirate: High-Energy Out and Proud Slut!  
> * Sassy space pirate: Ruffled Suburban Dad!  
> * Sex positivism: there is intelligent life in the universe!  
> * Beautiful space lady of unknown origins!  
> * Winn and Kara: Crime fighting bromance!  
> * Lena Luthor: Remembering to get therapy!  
> * Lena Luthor: Political mastermind!  
> * Extra, Extra! Cat Grant is being extra!  
> * Cat Grant, tough but fair on employees, ruthless on fashion faux pas!  
> * Wonder Woman taking Kara under her wing like a fairy goddess-mother!  
> * Wonder Woman being a kept woman and loving it!  
> * Alien Pets! Alien Foodstuffs! Explosions! Female-presenting nipples!  
> * Adult situations.  
>  

* * *

### Like my work?

I write it as a labor of love.  I have been writing since I learned to read but it wasn't until 2 weeks ago I got brave enough to post.  Everything I post to AO3 will be free of charge as it is derivative fanfic.  When I get to self publishing, that may/may not change.  
  
If you're desperate to show your financial gratitude, you can toss me coin for a coffee/candy bar/parking meter at my Ko-Fi here:   **http://ko-fi.com/alephthirteen**

The first arc of the story is up, our Kara has left her pod and left the comfort of the shire.  We're diving into the hero's journey now.  
  
Stay tuned for the rest of "Crashing To Earth", my lovelies!

* * *

 

 

Argo City, Tower of the House of El

 

The pod’s engine hums to life, a faint silvery glow coming from deep within the coils. Zor-El laughs at the ceiling, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. To think his classmates used to laugh at him for his interest in gravity-fields and vintage spacecraft. They laughed.

His brother is still at the med-center with his wife and their newborn nephew. Leave it to Jor-El and his wife to have a natural childbirth…even when he was a boy he had to do everything his own way.

Zor-El hasn’t seen his own wife in two days. Alura insisted on staying in the Tower of Justice as long as she could to write the emergency declarations. As far as he knows, only six people believe Krypton has hours to live and each one is doing everything they can to save the legacy. Kara is too young to help and Kal-El should spend every instant he can with Lara.

“Kolex, diagnostic on the propulsion core.”

No response.  
  
“Kolex, diagnostic on the propulsion core.”  
  
Instead of Kolex's voice, a strange recording plays.  It carries the tell-tale reverb of something passed through the universal translator.

 

 

> “ **Aye, aye, Captain. Is there anything else we can do? “**
> 
> “ **Cross your fingers. Kirk out. Death, destruction, disease, horror. That's what war is all about, Anan. That's what makes it a thing to be avoided. You've made it neat and painless. So neat and painless, you've had no reason to stop it. And you've had it for five hundred years. Since it seems to be the only way I can save my crew and my ship, I'm going to end it for you, one way or another.“**

“Kolex?”

“Is Kara all right?” he asks Kolex. Since Kara is his favorite topic, that should get Kolex’s attention. He doesn’t answer but a powerful hand grips his shoulder.

Zor-El whips around, holding the cutting torch tight. It’s not exactly a weapon but on full power it’s close enough. Instead of an intruder, he finds Kolex, his lift-jets wobbling and his head jerking back and forth. He seems to be suffering a software crash.

“Kolex. Is Kara hurt?”

Kolex tilts his head down. He looks ridiculous, mostly because Kara insisted on putting the actor’s mask on the robot. Something her friend found at one of the archeological digs, thousands of cycles older than Argo city. Kara was right. Putting a clay mask on a robot is hilarious.

“Kara is unharmed. She is asleep. Her biorhythms are within healthy ranges, although I am detecting rapid changes in her circulatory and endocri-”

“Stop!” Zor-El shouts. “That’s normal for her now.”

He remembers when she was nothing more than a squealing mess in her mother’s arms, still sticky with fluid from the birthing machines. The reminder that his little girl is becoming a woman hurts bad enough. With it comes the reminder that he won’t be there to help her. Krypton has hours left, perhaps two days.

Whatever life brings her, he will not be there to guide her through it.

He can only pray that Rao’s light protects her and perhaps one day someone on that far-off world lights her soul on fire, as Alura did the moment they met.

“Father Rao, let her have that. Guide her towards love,” he prays. “She is a child, innocent of her fathers’ sin.”

Kolex has stopped twitching but he hasn’t performed the diagnostic. This the first time in decades where Kolex has not replied.  Zor-El taps Kolex's sensor housing.

“Kolex, explain your failure to run a diagnostic.”

“My apologies. I believe the quantum uplink to central command was contaminated.”

“Why?”

“Lady Kara had requested I perform a scan of broadcast signals from Earth. We re-tasked an idle satellite from the colonization period. Due to some difficulties with the cadence and pacing of the creature in the recording, the translator mainframes were over taxed, which caused my incorrect reply. I am tracking 528 other broadcasts but Kara had asked to replay that one earlier today while she was studying."

He chuckles, putting his free hand on Kolex’s shoulder. Leave it to his little girl to find out about the top-secret evacuation and ‘appropriate’ ancient space hardware to spy on the planet he selected for her. Leave it to her robot to spoil her and distract her when she should be studying.

Calling up his wrist computer, he types up an order for the city’s central computer. Kara will need Kolex, especially if she doesn’t have her parents. She will need a friend with her and unlike her parents, Kolex can be condensed into a processing core and power supply no bigger than Kara’s fist. His body is not what makes him Kara’s friend: it’s ten cycles and thousands of hours she spent tinkering and reprogramming and more than a few pranks they played.

Kolex will go with her, whether he likes it or not.

Telling him out loud would risk a mutiny from Kolex – or a tantrum, given Kara’s sloppy programming – and it would mean Kolex’s last recording of him is a forced shutdown: a reminder of his servitude. After twenty cycles together in this lab, that wouldn’t be fair. Machine or no, Kolex has been his right hand since the day he joined the Science Guild. It will be kinder to let central control do it by remote override.

“So she had you distract her from her studies?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sounds like something she would do.”

Kolex goes completely still, the way he does when all his processors are overworked.

“Lady Kara did do it, sir. Therefore, your hypothesis is already proved. I fail to see how your conjecture adds to our knowledge.”

Zor-El sighs and waves the unlit torch at the other pods.

“Just go check the other pods, please. I need to see if they can be salvaged.”

“Of course.”

Four more pods sit in the makeshift hanger. He doubts that more than two of them can be repaired, given the damage they took over centuries in storage. Even if he does repair another he can’t imagine convincing Alura to go without him and he’s not about to leave her here to burn. If they cannot share escape, they will share death.

He goes over his checklist.

Kara has an escape pod with a working faster-than-light drive. A data crystal, survival canister and outpost kit are already in the cargo casket.

He has dinner on the table for his wife, in case she comes home before it’s all over.

Which means the lab downstairs is all that needs dealing with.

He puts his hand over the scanner, bracing himself for the prick of the stylus. As soon as the scan completes, the laser cauterizer seals the wound. One by one, six massive locks discharge their magnets and roll into their sockets. The blast door swings aside and he follows a trail of emergency lights into the depth of the bunker. Each step brings back a memory of some awful project, hideous creature or lethal prototype he created. A thousand things he can never atone for.

 

**(Ninety seconds after the destruction of Krypton)**

 

Three memories roll inside Kara’s mind, over and over.

Her mother kissing her cheek before shoving her into the pod.

Her father’s smile as he took his wife’s arm.

Her own scream as the explosion killed them.

She can’t breathe. Every time she tries, her throat seizes up. The cockpit around her is blurry and her arms feel heavy. Something slices into the side of her neck and she feels a chill spread through her body.

With a gasp, Kara draws the deepest breath she can, the frigid air from the oxygen tanks scraping across her aching throat. In the corner of her eye, she sees the med-probe retract, sizzling as it burns off a pinkish stain. It must have directly oxygenated her blood.

She wonders where her father even found this pod. It’s ancient. The onboard intelligence is only capable of obstacle evasion and navigation and the hull bears dozens of welds and seams where her father and Kolex repaired holes or spliced in better parts.

She hadn’t even thought of Kolex. Another voice she will never hear again.

“He’s gone too,” she sniffles. “Goodbye, Kolex.”

“Lady Kara?”

She turns her head, sending a flash of pain down her left side. Probably the drugs from the medical system. According to the life support panel, it had to inject a paralytic. Kara supposes she did try to claw her way out.

“What?” she sputters. “Kolex! You’re alive?”

“No. I am a machine.”

Kara snorts. Kolex is easily the funniest robot she ever met.

“I mean, you’re with me?”

“Correct. Your father instructed central command to shut me down and detach my core from my chassis. It appears I am in the cargo casket behind you.”

Kara sighs. At least she will have someone to talk to.

“Can you do something about this mess of a computer?”

“Stand by,” he replies. His voice isn’t right though. Too flat, too hard. Probably coming from a micro-speaker rather than the verbal interface system of the chassis.

“Sensors online. Communications online. Navigation locked out. Your father’s orders.”

“Can I see?” she croaks. “Krypton, I mean.”

“As you wish.”

The monitor on the left panel lights up, showing the cloud of rubble and superheated ore that was once her home. The right panel shows ejecta and debris raining down on Daxam. Another arm of debris is snaking towards Rao, dropping highly enriched fuel crystals into the stars’ outer layers. Projected on the cockpit glass is a recording from her father. The room he recorded it in is one she’s never seen before but the shaking of the walls tell her it was recorded not long before the explosion.

 

 

> “ **I wish that we could go with you. There’s no time to fix another pod. Your cousin will be safe, I know it. You-”**

> “ **You are the best of us, Kara, my little star. I don’t know if any others will survive but I cannot imagine a better woman to tell our story. To tell Krypton’s story. The planet we’re sending you to-“**

Kara wishes he would have let her help. Did he really think ‘the best’ would never find out about his little plan? If he would have told her where the pods were locked up, she would have been there day and night trying to repair them.

“Kolex, skip any description of Earth.”

 

 

> “… **and Krypton is gone now. According to our simulations Rao itself will go nova after it absorbs the exotic matter in the debris. But the light will shine down on Earth for many years. When you look up from Earth, think of Rao’s glow as your mother and me, watching over you.”**
> 
> “ **Remember us, Kara.“**

 

* * *

 

**Deep Space | Unknown Vessels**

 

Four black specks cast their tiny shadows over methane storms that dwarf planets. Cables unspool from some hidden mechanism, dumping electrical waste into the planet’s outer atmosphere. Small, still and silent, the vessels are unseen by the passing refugee flotilla.

The vessel tailing the rag-tag fleet is an old heavy cruiser from the wars centuries ago, the _Flames of Kandor_. Kryptonian cadets are taught about every battle that ship ever fought. Pilots and commanders drill against the _Flames_ _and_ only graduate when they can destroy her in every conceivable engagement.

Four computers debate their next move. Three of them may be submerged and hidden below the gas but they see through each other’s eyes and they think as one.

_[Alert: Unidentified spacecraft in vicinity.]_

_[Analysis: Ships are of Daxamite design. Charging defense fields.]_

_[Analysis Update: Distress calls from Krypton playing on all channels.]_

_[Conjecture: Daxamite attack on Krypton.]_

_[Action: Attack and evade.]_

A swarm of missiles breaks the upper clouds and strike _Flames_ ’ largest engine, shattering the heat shield. Superheated debris slices into maneuvering thrusters, hull plating and finally fuel lines. Explosions tear the ship apart, hurling jagged scraps of plating into the nearest civilian vessels.

Three hundred years after the bombardment of Kandor, the dead are avenged.

The attackers warp out as soon as they clear the clouds, leaving a trail of plasma among the debris and frozen corpses.

* * *

**Deep Space | Kara Zor-El**

Kara rubs her face with the back of her fist. Tiny flecks of blood smear across the dry and cracking skin of her hand.

 _All that from the crying?_ She supposes it would explain her parched throat and itchy face. If she can’t get a handle on her emotions, Kolex will probably sedate her and forcibly rehydrate her while she sleeps.

“Kolex, are there any other messages? Other survivors?”

“Stand by, my lady.”

The pod is not silent, which is terrifying. It hums and clicks and wheezes, betraying the age of the systems. The cruise ship that she and her aunt took to Starhaven was silent because everything was flawlessly maintained and every bit of floor was carpeted.

 _Astra_ _would be alive!_ Kara realizes, feeling warmth in her chest for the first time in days. Her aunt is serving a life sentence for terrorism in Fort Rozz but all the prison barges are administered by other species in other systems. Unless something happened, she is alive.

“I have detected no new signals, only automated beacons.”

“Thank you,” she croaks.

She sucks in a breath, hoping she won’t break down again.

“Lady Kara? If it would improve your emotional state, I can play a message I received from your mother.”

“Please.”

It’s probably the same goodbye she’s heard a thousand times but even so, it is her mother’s voice. She takes a deep breath, forcing her sobs down so she can focus on her mother’s last words.

Except it isn’t the message her mother recorded from Kara’s bedroom. This was recorded in her office and her mother is in her adjudicator's robes.

Kara jerks her head up, tears forgotten. This is something she hasn’t heard before.

 

 

> “ **Children of Krypton, I address you as Alura of El, High Adjudicator and as the last member House Ina and House Zenn. By the time this transmission reaches the network, Krypton will be destroyed and Rao will be dying. Billions will be dead.”**
> 
> “ **Greed destroyed us and it destroyed Krypton. Greed that went unchecked because of the arrogance of the Great Houses.”**
> 
> “ **As head of council by default, I hereby discontinue the guild system. I hereby discontinue the Seat of the Nameless and implore the Nameless to create Houses as they see fit. The council votes from Great Houses without surviving members will be reapportioned.”**
> 
> “ **I hereby vacate the sentences of any Kryptonian inmates in our custody. I hereby cancel all debts, private and public, to any entity based on Krypton.”**
> 
> “ **We are all equals now: colonist and Argonite, high-born and nameless, criminal and adjudicator. If we cannot better ourselves and deal fairly with one another, we will die out."**
> 
> “ **Survivors from Krypton itself will be few. The council has designated the following rendezvous points for survivors. Any refugees will arrive there. Treat them as you would your family, I beg of you.”**
> 
> “ **We are all Rao’s children and we will not vanish so easily. The void has taken Krypton and it will soon take Rao. But it has not taken our people. We will endure. May Rao’s light shine through you.”**

Her mother reaches out to turn the recording device and Kara reaches towards the projection, desperate to touch her one last time. Before her fingers can brush the hologram, it cuts out. It must have been filmed until the very last moment. Her mother died filming that, pleading for help from rim-rats and Nameless who she never would have looked at in Argo.

“Kolex! Astra’s been pardoned! We can go find her!”

She doesn’t even have to think about it.

“Set course for Vhoc’s Gate Prison.”

_Rao’s Shadow, what system is that in?_

“Davarr system,” Kolex adds.

“What would I do without you?” Kara sniffs.

“Die of thirst, apparently. Setting course now.”

The navigation computer boots up and starts to plot a new course but shuts back down.

“What happened?”

“Our course is still hardware-locked, Lady Kara. It cannot be changed without partially disassembling the propulsion system and performing repairs. Which would need to be done from outside the hull.”

Kara drums her fingers on the controls.

“Something which I will not allow you to attempt, young lady.”

He used a recording of her mother’s voice for ‘young lady’ because he knew it would stop Kara.

“We’re not going to a rendezvous, are we?”

“No. We are course-locked for Earth.”

“Whose orders?”

“Your father’s. My hypothesis is that your mother was merely concerned about Earth’s habitability, not the possibility of reunion with survivors. Kara?”

Even through these awful speakers, Kara can hear Kolex’s sadness. It may be only software to emulate emotion for the comfort of living things but it _works_. She feels better with him here than she would alone.

“Additional orders from your father were just executed. There is an auto-surgery suite in the pod which has just activated and medical procedures are being streamed into it. They are encrypted and am performing them but I do not know their purpose. Please forgive me.”

Kara screams. Not from the sting of the injector in her neck but because this is her _father_ doing this. One last experiment? One last project that he ‘couldn’t talk about’ for the Military Guild?

“Nothing to forgive, Kolex. This wasn’t you.”

As her vision spins and fades, she sees four flashes of pale blue light, two to each side of the cockpit. Starships leaving warp. They’re not much larger than hers. Their hulls are flat black and their engine vents are tiny slits.

Before she can hail the newcomers, the sedative takes her.

 

* * *

 **July 14** **2002, Earth | Mari McCabe (“Vixen”)**

Geosynchronous orbit, 1500 kilometers over Metropolis

The Justice League’s “Lighthouse” Space Station 

 

The control panel is beeping faintly but he doesn’t notice. Batman is asleep. The fight last night took everything he had and between the bruises, the blow to the head...it was too much. He is slumped over the keyboard, snoring into his mask.

A woman strolls past his post, bare feet moving across the steel plating without so much as a rustle. The only sound she makes is a contented moaning sound as she pops another cookie into her mouth. This is a hug in food form.

_You are something else, Ma Kent._

“These are fricking amazing,” she mumbles.

“Hey Bats, you ever try these?”

He doesn’t answer. He is sprawled against the control panel while the monitor above him blinks ‘signals detected’ over and over. His cape is snagged on the chair’s hinge and the spines on his armored gloves are digging into his face.

“Bats?”

She pulls a phone from her jeans and snaps a photo. She considers streaming it but that’s probably not a good idea. Revealing too much about this place would get someone killed and she can’t count on the bad guys to focus on the joke instead of analyzing the equipment in the background.

He needs to wake up and do his job. A good old-fashioned roar to the face should do it.

She breathes deep and stills her mind as the spectral forms of various beasts swirl around her. All the creatures that ever walked the earth.

 _Perfect,_ Vixen decides. _A tigress._ She feels the cold as her alter ego goes plunging through the Siberian snows in pursuit of a wounded elk. Her lips darken and curl into a smirk even as fur spreads across her face and her hands sprout claws.

At least this time she avoided growing the tail. Grandmother was right, practice helps.

She clears her throat, bends down beside Batman and roars as loud as she can.

Her deals with the joke about as well as she expected, swinging blindly at her before he’s really awake. She intercepts the blow with ease, curling her fingers around his fist so that her newly-grown claws almost touch his skin.

“Asleep at the post, eh?”

“No, Vixen. I was meditating.”

“Ancient technique from Nanda Prabat, I’m sure. Mistakes happen, Bruce.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Really? I mean, it’s not like _Batman_ falls asleep on lookout duty. So that had to be Bruce Wayne. Anyway...”

She sets her plate down on the console.

“Saved you a couple of cookies. We animal fetishists have to stick together.”

The tiniest smile flickers crosses his lips. Amazing. How many times has he actually smiled while suited up?

“Just eat it. Even _you_ are not paranoid enough to reject Martha Kent’s snickerdoodles.”

Vixen walks off. Her still-enhanced ears catch Bruce muttering something appreciative so she puts a little extra sway in her step.

As she starts up the ladder, it his. The tension starts deep in her belly, coiling tight. Before long it feels like her skin is buzzing. One of the guards passes her and just the smell of sweat on the man’s uniform creates a sharp throb between her legs.

 _Not good_ _,_ she realizes. _This is the problem with channeling big cats._

She’s not sure she could break the link now if she wanted to. Her mind is as much the tigress’ as her own and the tigress has only one goal: find an equally powerful creature and fuck it senseless.

“Hawkgirl better be off duty,” Vixen mutters.

She would rather not traumatize some rookie sentry and the last time she went out while channeling an animal in heat, she did something stupid in public and hurt someone she loves. There were some very uncomfortable de-briefs the next day. Not to mention an apology to Kendra.

Vixen sprints up the stairway to the sleeping quarters and throws her shoulder against the bunk room door.

_Thank the ancestors._

Kendra is alone, her freckled face halfway hidden behind a spy novel. Her wings droop behind her and the smell of peppermint oil is thick in the air. A hairbrush sits on the bedside table with curly strands of red hair trapped in it and a few dozen dull gray feathers are in the trash can.

She doesn't look up until a growl escapes Mari’s throat. Lifting her gaze, Kendra swallows hard. She reaches for the hem of her sweatshirt but before she can start, Mari’s clawed fingers hook into the fabric and she slashes down, ripping it open.

“I want to hear what happened, Mari,” Kendra chuckles. “after.”

As herself or as “Vixen” or maybe the tigress, Mari lunges at her mate and spins her around, pressing her against the cabin wall.  Her tongue traces between Kendra's shoulder-blades up to the base of her skull, wide and strong and sandpaper rough.

"Uhh," Kendra groans.  "Surprised I didn’t lose any feathers just from that."

“I trust you. But careful with those claws, baby.”

Mari braces herself on her elbow so that she can run the smooth side of her claws along Kendra’s scalp. Using the back of her fist Mari presses upwards between Kendra's thighs.  Sucking in a sharp breath, Kendra goes on tiptoe to lessen the blaze she just felt.

“Too much?”

“Y-y-yes,” Kendra pants. “I mean no! Just do it slower. Slower, like that.”

“Ease up, darling. I’ll take care of you.”

Kendra relaxes, letting her weight push Mari’s fist into her mound. Her hips have a mind of their own, rolling back and forth to get _more._ More is all she can think about. More velvet-furred skin dragging along her clit. More hot breath on her neck. More snarls and hisses in her ear. More of Mari’s powerful body pinning her to the cold steel of the wall.

“Come for me,” Mari huffs in her ear.

It’s too much. Lightning gathers in between her legs before exploding up her spine. All the air leaves her lungs in a scream and she sags into Mari’s arms. Time doesn’t pass any more and the universe is gone. All that exists is the places they’re touching.

Kendra laughs as Mari presses wet kisses down her bare back.

“Shh, shh, shh,” Mari coos. “I wont drop you, Kendra.”

The link is fading. The claws that had been ghosting across Kendra's scalp are shrinking back and the fingers between her legs are smooth now. Her shoulders ache and her left wing is numb from being jammed up against the wall.

“Ready to stand?”

After checking that she can still work her toes, Kendra nods.

“Mari, what the hell did you _do?_ Not that I’m complaining.”


	2. Adoption, Lies and Videotape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":  
> Where Alex is a surfer, Superman is more sly than you think, Kara watches some girl-power on the teevee, Eliza is the definition of mom, Wonder Woman gives a gift, Alex is not here for racial profiling and middle school is the worst.
> 
> STYLE GUIDE:
> 
> Italics in quotes (i.e. out loud) is foreign languages.  
> Italics are thoughts/observations.  
> Brackets [ ] are interactions with artificial intelligences and cybernetics.  
>  **Bold** and block-quoted passages are recorded messages, songs or poems.

* * *

**July 14, 200** **2** **, Earth** **|** **Alex Danvers**

The coast of Virginia

 

Alex paddles out past the buoy and turns back towards shore. The next wave is coming. She glances over at Vicki. She’s standing on her board, if it can be called that. It’s more like fancy wobbling.

 _Shit,_ Alex realizes. _I pushed her too hard._

“I’m scared!”

“Don’t be! You’re too pretty to die!” Alex teases.

Vicki flattens herself against the board and shakes her head. So maybe surfing isn’t her thing. They can do something else for the rest of the week, something Vicki actually likes.

Alex shoots her a thumbs up and gets into a crouch as she sees the swell building. Thunder rolls across a clear sky. The next thing she knows, she’s treading water and bleeding from her nose. Poking it gently, she decides it isn’t broken. She hauls herself up onto her board and looks around.

Something hit the outcropping at the edge of the cove and hit it _hard._ It looks like the rock was melted on impact, leaving a groove of molten rock reaching from the top of the cliff-face to the water.

“Alex!” Vicki screams, pointing at the rocks.

A small silver craft is disappearing below the water, leaving behind a cloud of steam. Before it goes under Alex gets a glimpse of the pilot and it’s a freaking _kid,_ maybe fourteen or fifteen and clearly unconscious. At least Alex thinks it’s a plane but it must be cutting-edge tech. It has no wings and it hit a rock face with enough speed that the friction melted granite.

Cutting the cord on her ankle, she dives under. Air bubbles rise from three narrow cuts in the fuselage and sparks are crawling over the back half of the airplane. It settles on the sandy bottom, surrounded by a few wisps of seaweed.

She reaches the cockpit and thumps on the glass, trying to wake the pilot. Scrabbling at the edges of the glass, she feels for a latch or a handle or _something._

Then the glass is gone. Dissolved. As she reaches for the harness, it decays into black grit. Getting her arms under the girl’s, Alex tugs her out of the seat and starts toward the surface. Her vision is starting to blacken. She’s been down here too long.

The last thing she remembers is hoping that this girl can swim.

 

Alex retches out a mouthful of seawater and gulps air until her lungs are sore. The girl from the plane is motionless beside her. She’s not breathing but her skin isn’t blue, which is good. They’re floating somehow, which is weird because unconscious people can’t swim and this girl isn’t moving. She should have been like a rock around Alex’s ankle but somehow she kept them afloat when they were both passed out.

She isn’t sure she can make it all the way to the shore but there’s a small pocket of sand along the cliff face and dragging this kid along is easier than she thought. It’s like she doesn’t even weigh anything. Alex gets her onto the sand and crouches over her chest, trying to remember what her mom told her about CPR.

Turns out none of that matters when the patient’s chest is like concrete.

“Fuck,” Alex grumbles. “What am I going to do?”

Vicki is nowhere to be seen, so hopefully she has gone to get help.

The kid turns her head and groans, spitting out seawater.

“Hey there,” Alex sighs. “Glad you’re not dead.”

The reply is most definitely _not_ in English.

She starts to get off the girl but before she can, she is thrown off into the sand. The girl shouts something, maybe a name, before diving into the water.

_I hope she has a radio. Emergency blanket would be nice too._

Almost everything hurts. Alex’s wrist is sprained and she aches from her back to her knees from being thrown into the gravel. Reaching up to her hair, she presses her fingers onto her scalp and rubs.

_No bruises and nowhere tender. So no concussion. Probably._

The girl is back, this time holding a large black suitcase with a symbol etched into it. Alex didn’t see her approach. She was just there when she looked up. Weird. What’s weirder is that she’s hovering a good eight inches off the ground.

Alex must have hit her head harder than she thought.

A loud crack rolls in from the ocean and reverberates throughout the tiny cove. Alex looks up and sees a small, blue-and-red streak headed right for her. As it slows down it becomes apparent that it is Superman. Hovering over the bay, he looks around.

There is another, softer crack and he is beside them.

“Was that a sonic boom?” Alex groans, cupping the sides of her head. “If it was, _why_?”

“Sorry.”

The girl locks eyes with Superman and he looks her over. For some reason, he steps back. Her eyes narrow and she says something in that same weird language. To Alex, it sounds like music. Like a duet. Every syllable seems to have two tones going on at once: high and low or low and high.

Tears in her eyes, the girl strokes his face and then reaches out to the "S" badge on his chest. He crosses his arms over the badge like he was protecting it. He hangs his head.

“I don’t understand you,” he whispers.

Alex has had it.

“Someone tell me what the sparkly hell is going on!” she yells.

“This is my cousin,” he mumbles. “Older cousin. Her name is Kara.”

Alex opens her mouth to reply, stalls and shuts her mouth. Then tries again.

“Well,” she finally manages to say. “That’s complicated.”

He turns towards Alex, crouching down on the sand in front of her.

“Can you watch her for me?” he asks.

_Sure. Just ask me to protect an unbreakable alien I can’t even talk to. No big!_

“I babysat for a few days last year.”

He grins and gives her a peck on the cheek. Her first kiss. On the cheek and more like family than anything...except Alex is _seventeen_ and he's _famous_.  she isn’t quite sure what to do with that.

“Good enough.  Thanks for watching her.  I think I have to go commit treason.”

“Sure.  Wait! Treason?” she calls after him.

“If I end up in jail, I will _kill you_ ,” she mutters.

Another crack and he’s gone. As quiet finally settles across the water, the girl she rescued collapses beside Alex, sobbing. She wraps her arms around Alex, gripping hard. Not enough to crack her ribs but close. Alex will have hand-prints tomorrow.

She hadn’t really taken a close look before. Kara is really pretty but she looks nothing like her cousin. Supes is famous for his baby blues, his square jaw and his slicked-back hair. He’s basically a male model, with the product being the 1950’s.

Kara has golden eyes, has milk-chocolate skin and gray hair so pale and shiny it looks like jewelry.

_Obviously some time dilation if she’s older than him. Black hole or relativity?_

_If she’s his cousin, maybe his family was biracial?_

_Were there even “races” on Krypton?_

_Or did his family marry into multiple species?_

_Is she two different kinds of alien?_

“So many questions!” Alex whispers to the girl. “Just wait until you learn English.”

Golden eyes filled with tears stare back at her before Kara buries her face in Alex’s wetsuit. Alex feels like she just kicked a puppy and stole a ballon from a baby.

“Shh, hey. Look at me. It’ll be fine.”

Alex sighs.

“And you don’t have a clue what I’m saying. Let’s just hold each other.”

They do and the longer that Kara holds Alex, the slower her breathing gets. The more she breathes rather than sobs. The squeak of tires on asphalt breaks Alex out of her stupor. A lime green minivan just sped into the parking lot. Her mom hops out of the driver’s seat and throws the back open, motioning frantically for Alex.

Kara doesn’t react at all when Alex lowers her into the water. Whatever is bothering her is bad. Her small hands keep their death-grip on her suitcase.

As soon as Alex’s feet hit the sand, her mom rushes over.

“Give her to me, Alex.”

When she doesn’t answer, her mom slaps Alex on the shoulder. Her mother never hits her, not even halfheartedly like that, but maybe she needed her attention.

“Alex! We have to _go,_ babygirl. She’s not safe here.”

Alex swallows hard.

“Right. I’ll get her bag, I guess.”

Her mom takes the still-limp girl in her arms and lays her in the back seat, tucking her under a fluffy pink blanket. Alex gets into the passenger seat. Her mother pulls out so fast it throws Alex's head up against the window.

“Ow.”

Her mom’s face softens.

“Sorry, Alex. I didn’t mean to. I’m just stressed.”

Alex snorts.

“Superman just told me to watch over his cousin and then said he was going to commit treason. I know a big fucking deal when I see one, mom.”

“Language, young lady!”

Eliza thumps Alex’s headrest with her hand.

“You must switch off all computers. It is imperative to Lady Kara’s safety.”

“Shit!” her mom squeaks, slamming on the brakes.

It came from somewhere in the back seat, a computerized male voice. Her eyes flick sideways at her daughter.

“Tsk, Tsk.”

“Don’t even say it, young lady.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, _Eliza.”_

It bugs her mom when she uses her name. Chances are that it will be “Alexandra Elaine Danvers” for the next week. Alex flips her cell phone over, pulls the battery out and tosses it over her shoulder into the seat. She takes the SIM card out and cracks it in half. Her mother scowls at her.

“I know, it’s expensive. But that chip is how they know which phone it is, Mom.”

“Good thought. But no more spy movies for you, young lady.”

“Better do mine too,” her mom asks, handing her phone over.

“We’re adopting her, aren’t we?”

“I don’t know, sweetie.”

Alex rolls her eyes.

“Uh-huh. The last time I saw that look on your face was when I brought that kitten home. The cat who _still lives_ with us. Who you bought ‘birthday’ presents for last week. You really telling me you’re going to let my kid sister out of your sight?”

Eliza huffs.

“I’m pretty sure that’s why he grabbed me. He knows I’m a sap.”

“Supes? How do you even know him?”

“He took an intro astronomy class with your dad. Almost flunked it, too.”

Alex snickers.

“An actual alien from outer space failing astronomy?”

Her mom sighs.

“It’s like biology is for you, I suppose. He probably learned advanced concepts as a boy, so he kept giving the wrong answers because the textbook had it simplified. He wanted extra credit so your dad made him assist me in the lab. It was mostly me driving him nuts with questions and him letting me run tests on skin and hair samples.”

“Really? Hair and skin samples? Please tell me you didn’t put any of the hair in a scrapbook, Mom.”

Staring at the rear-view mirror, Alex sees Superman standing on the beach with his back to them. Soldiers are crawling all over the place as he points out different things. He is systematically pointing them every single direction _except_ down the road her mother is currently speeding down.

Her mom looks at the mirror. She must think the same thing because her knuckles go white on the steering wheel.

“Slow down, mom. I don’t think we want to get pulled over.”

No one says a word the rest of the drive.

 

* * *

 

 **August 10** **200** **2** **| Alex Danvers**

Midvale, Maryland

Danvers Household

 

Alex’s alarm belts out the _Star Wars_ theme. Getting up would be easier if she’d slept more than half an hour. She hates the world.

Looking over at the other bed, she sees perfect-hair, perfect-skin Kara wide awake and watching her. She is wearing _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ pajamas and pink bunny slippers. As far as their mom knows, Kara just likes Buffy’s clothes. Certainly Alex would not be so wicked as to watch and rewatch a _horror_ show with her traumatized kid sister. She definitely would not have carefully shown Kara half a dozen horror, action and science fiction shows where the people kicking ass are women. Kara’s reaction to _Alien_ was priceless. When the alien first came on, Kara reached towards the screen like she was going to pet it or something. Definitely a story there.

“Hello, sis,” Alex manages, smacking her lips.

“ _Salim, rahki,_ ” Kara replies. “What you said, but that’s galactic standard.”

Alex scoffs. “I knew that.”

“No you didn’t,” Kara giggles. In the dim light her eyes _glitter_ with reflected light which is another thing Alex finds deeply unfair.

Her offer to ‘keep the boys away’ was not _entirely_ for Kara’s benefit. It’s the only way Alex is going to be getting a date.

“You’ve taught me standard.”

“No, I taught you the street version. Half of what you know is curses. Standard was created for trade agreements so...”

“No good curses?” Alex offers.

Kara nods.

“If you see an alien, warn me,” Alex mutters. “I don’t want to accidentally tell someone to fuck their uncles goldfish or something.”

Kara laughs until she is short of breath and the bottle of water by her bed freezes solid. She growls in frustration. Alex tosses a pillow at her, which Kara blocks effortlessly. The pillow wavers in mid-air and a pair of socks on the floor rise towards it.

That is new.

“You just broke _gravity,”_ Alex whispers.

Kara’s lip quivers and the pillow and sock flop onto the floor. Whatever amazingness was happening was broken when she started to cry.

 _Crap,_ Alex thinks. _She thinks I’m mad._

“Which is amazing! Why don’t you wait until we get back home to do it again?”

“A-All right,” Kara sniffs.

Alex pushes herself up on aching arms. She snags a pair of jeans and a top from ‘Clothes Mountain’ and sniffs them. This must have been the clean side of the pile. Sleep is something she should try to do more often. Maybe it will be easier tonight once she and Kara have survived a day of school.

Kara’s giggling follows her all the way down the hall to the bathroom. At least Alex can do makeup half-asleep after all the sneaking out she and Vicki did this summer.

“Girls! School!” Eliza bellows.

There’s a whoosh and a crackling sound behind her. That was probably Kara going downstairs, this time without a pocket-sized sonic boom. Alex turns the dial on the heater grate so that it goes quiet.

“She’s getting ready, Eliza.”

“Alex should have already been awake,” their mother grumbles.

“She was worried about me being safe at school. I don’t think she slept. She’s tired.”

Wow. Kara backing her up with mom? That’s new and different. Maybe sophomore year won’t suck as much as she thought.

“Alex loves you, Kara. Even if she has trouble showing it.”

“She shows it, Eliza. She’s just weird sometimes.”

“Hmm. That’ll have to be good enough.”

_Ringing vote of confidence there._

A month ago Kara would not speak or even open her eyes. Nothing but sobbing and whispering in her native language. Not speaking and not looking made language-teaching a royal pain in the ass. Teaching her English was Alex’s job. Turned out that playing charades was the key. The first time she actually told a joke that made Kara laugh, it felt like a standing ovation at the opera. Alex still feels a little flutter of pride when Kara laughs.

Glancing at the mirror, Alex flicks her fingers through her hair. It will have to do. She fiddles with the choker Vicki gave her at the start of summer, making sure it’s fastened. The weird metal bracelet Kara gave her is way too big and bumps against her wrist bones. She can’t take it off. The last time she did, Kara burst into tears and disappeared. Alex had to get her to float back down while standing on the roof wrapped in a blanket. The whole thing meant getting screamed at by mom _and_ dad about Kara using her powers outside.

As Alex walks down stairs, the railing is still flickering with tiny arcs of blue energy, a side effect of Kara moving at top speed. When their dad gets back from this business trip, Alex has a thousand questions to ask him about how Kara’s powers work.

Hurrying downstairs, Alex grabs a pancake off the tray and stuffs it into her mouth. No time for syrup so she’s really glad it was blueberry.

“See? Plenty of time.”

Her mom rolls her eyes.

“I know you’re trying, babygirl.”

Eliza pulls her into a hug and kisses her forehead.

“It won’t be perfect, not on the first day. Just keep her safe.”

Alex stands up straight and salutes, a second pancake dangling from her lips.

Eliza waves her hands at the door. “Go! Both of you clowns.”

* * *

 **August 10** **200** **2** **| Kara Danvers**

Midvale, Maryland

Midvale Unified High School

 

Alex’s history books were wrong. School is hell. War can’t possibly be this bad. The boys keep trying to touch her and the girls keep making faces at her. The girls make the same face Alex made when Eliza asked her to fix the bathroom sink and they found that hairy thing in the pipe.

Just when Kara thought it could not be worse, she found out that Alex is two years ahead and has classes in a different building. Eliza had told probably her but she forgot.

 _Not ‘Eliza’. M_ _om told me,_ Kara reminds herself. Her birth mother is dead. All she is doing now is hurting Eliza’s feelings. She is being unfair to an innocent woman who cares for her, which would no doubt horrify Alura.

“ _Rao,”_ she whispers. _“Take_ _your daughter_ _Alura into your light to rest with her husband, her mother, her foremothers and all those who find peace with you. Tell her that I am safe and that I love her.”_

“Out of the way, loser.”

A large boy in a red jacket interrupts her prayer by shoving her out of the way, slamming her into the lockers before she can react. People are staring at her now. Kara wiggles her fingers and a terrible sound echoes around the hallway, cutting past every trick Alex taught her to block out noise.

She tries again and recognizes the sound – tearing metal. Luckily for her, everyone else is covering their ears. Looking sideways, she sees that she was thrown into the locker hard enough to bend it around her. Which would not have happened to something softer, like a human girl.

“ _Rao’s shadow.”_ She revealed herself already and it’s not fourth period yet. At least her hearing lets her curse without anyone else knowing.

The nurse comes jogging down the hallway, followed by the principal.

“Don’t move, sweetie.”

“I’m okay,” Kara insists.

“No you’re not. That ape could have killed you!” the nurse grumbles.

She looks over her shoulder at the principal. The way her eyes narrow and her face goes still reminds Kara of seeing her aunt giving orders to her soldiers.

“Get those football players on a _leash,_ Mr. Jensen.”

His face gets red and opens his mouth to say something, but the nurse cuts him off.

“Or someday you’ll be explaining to the press when some poor girl _dies.”_

She turns back to Kara and smooths her hair out of her face. The nurse is a big, round woman and her grip on Kara’s wrist is powerful, for a human.

“Pulse is fine. Did you hit your head?”

Kara groans in ‘pain’ the way Alex taught her.

“Course you did. Wait here, I’ll get Fred.”

She finds out that a “Fred” is actually just a man. The janitor, which is like a non-robot servant. It seems odd to Kara that humans do such unimportant things now that they have machines. He's nice to her though. He has gray hair, which Alex says means he’s old.

He has some sort of huge scissors in his hand, with handles as long as his arm. Memories of mono-molecule blades cutting into her body and laying graft tissue rise in her mind and Kara fights the urge to scream.

“Plenty of space at the edge, Fred. Do _not_ cut her,” the nurse growls.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Fred tips his hat to the nurse and starts cutting Kara out of the locker.

 

 

Nurse Simmons likes to talk about her grandchildren, Kara learns. She likes it more than breathing. Based on her practice with Alex, Kara knows roughly how often she should pretend to breathe in different situations. Simmons isn’t breathing very often, especially for a woman her age.

“Can I go, please?”

Simmons shakes her head.

“Not until I get you a tetanus booster. Rules and all that. Your parents aren’t anti-vaccination, are they?”

Kara snorts. _Thank Rao_ it was a question that Alex coached her on. Sooner or later, someone is going to ask her something and she’s not going to have an answer ready.

“They’re both scientists, so they’re smart. Of course they’re not anti-vaxxers.”

Simmons chuckles.

“I think I like you, little lady.”

She pulls out the syringe, glancing to Kara like she was expecting something.

“Brave girl,” she teases. “Lots of kids hate needles.”

“I…” Kara pauses. “Had lots of surgeries when I was small.”

Simmons starts swabbing down the area. Kara’s finger is mashing the button on the pager Eliza gave her. She needs Alex’s help to figure out what to do when Simmons realizes that she can’t pierce her skin.

[Kolex! Help!]

[If I may, Lady Kara. It might be possible to disrupt your body’s defense mechanism temporarily and in a small area.]

[Do it.]

The muscles in her right arm spasm.

[Done.]

[Kolex, I want you to speak to me more often. Daily. You’re all I have left of Krypton. I would rather have you, despite the risk of radio emissions. Do I make myself clear?]

[Very. Shall I simulate a game of tic-tac-toe?]

Before she can answer, fuzzy green lines appear in her vision and Kolex starts playing, tracking her eye movements to place her pieces.

It takes Simmons tapping on her forehead to get her back.

“Which arm, sweetie?”

“Use the right arm, please.”

The needle sinks in without difficulty. Whatever Kolex did to her skin heightened her senses at the same time. She can feel the flat steel of the needle’s shaft scraping along the muscle fibers in her arm. The dull buzz of the school that she had tuned out is now a wall of noise. Worst of all, even with the glasses on she is assaulted by colors she has not seen before and a blinding reflection almost every surface.

“All done.”

Simmons swivels her chair around to get a band-aid. She turns back to Kara with a raised eyebrow.

“Huh. Tough little lady.”

“Totally. That’s me. I mean, how would I even bleed? There’s no extra space for blood…I’m too tiny!”

Alex appears at the door in her gym outfit, panting.

“You all right, sis?”

Kara sniffs, opening her arms to Alex.

“It’s all right. Come here, you.”

With the hug, Alex’s lips are right next to her ear.

“Football player?”

Kara nods.

“Which one?” Alex demands.

 

* * *

 **August 11** **200** **2** **| Alex Danvers**

Midvale, Maryland

Midvale Unified High School

 

Alex clenches and unclenches her fist. Her knuckles are still sore and she had to cover up the black eye. The school is down a star linebacker and that’s something they can’t fix. It took six hours of internet research to figure out how to hurt him badly enough to get him off the team without ruining his entire life. She didn’t have a plan until well after three in the morning.  Lucky for her, a guy like that will _always_ agree to meet a girl at four in the morning in a gas station parking lot.

He has five bruised tendons in his left knee, five in his right and hairline crack in his left femur and his jaw. Even when it heals he won’t be playing as well as he did before. He never saw her face but he heard her voice and she made sure to wear lots of perfume. All he knows he got clobbered by a girl. No way he’ll admit to that.

“Danvers, K to the office.”

Hearing her last name makes Alex seize up. She was ready to hear her name called. A crime was committed, after all. Kara? Kara hasn’t started making _eye contact_ yet and she keeps folding herself into corners to be out of the way so there’s no way she got into trouble.

She has a free half period and its lunchtime. Maybe she should picnic in the club room. She doubts the chess team will care and from there, she can see the whole office.

As usual, the club room is full of students. Knitting, chess, electronics, some crazy-complicated board game with plastic robots and spaceships. It’s the room nerds go to so that they can be safe and so that the office is ten feet away if a bully comes by. She’s spent more time in this room herself than she would ever admit.

“Hey, Alex.”

Larry Engels waves at her. He’s playing a game of chess with a small blonde with tight French braid in her hair. Alex hasn’t met her before.

“Hi, Larry. How goes?”

“Well, I think she’s about to re-enact the Viking conquest of England.”

The girls head snaps up. Larry wiggles backwards in his seat. It is a very intense stare, Alex supposes.

“What?” Larry chuckles. “Your name is Lagherta, for pity’s sake. Prominent tenth-century warlord? Appears in English texts describing the early raids? Queen of Sweden?”

He looks up at Alex for help.

“You’re on your own for this one.”

The new girl snorts.

“Fine,” she huffs, moving her queen. “Checkmate.”

She spins on her stool and holds her hand out to Alex.

“Lagherta Svaine. Call me Gertie.”

“Alex Danvers. Uh, call me Alex? Okay…” Alex wheezes. “Thinking I understand Vikings better now. Quite the handshake.”

Larry folds up the board and heads to class. Gertie pulls a chair up next to Alex.

“Is this the lunch-eating club?” She asks, accent much clearer now.

“Of course,” Alex teases, handing over an orange. “Do you not have those in Sweden?”

“No,” Gertie sighs. “We eat outside, in the snow. Tree bark, mostly.”

Alex rolls her eyes.

“I’m American, not stupid,” she huffs.

“Well, tree bark is awful. The girls aren’t as pretty, either,” Gertie murmurs.

Gertie tucks her Alex's behind her ear, leaving a strange buzz on her earlobe and a hot feeling in her cheeks. Alex’s cheeks darken and she dips her head.

“Yikes.”

Gertie pulls back.

“I’m sorry. I thought you were gay. I didn’t mean to!”

Alex feels like an asshole.

“I’m not gay,” Alex blurts out. “Gertie, don’t worry. I I was just surprised. Not used to getting attention from anybody, boy or girl.”

Gertie wrings her hands.

“Sorry I bothered you.”

“You didn’t. And I promise I’m not some puritan who’s going to hand you over to the Inquisition or something. Even if I am an American.”

They finish Alex’s lunch in silence.

“I don’t understand why you’re worried. Is it serious if your sister is sent to the office?”

Alex sighs.

“My sister isn’t…” she stalls. “Her skin is darker than mine. ‘Black’.”

Gertie snickers at the air quotes.

“Ah. And I presume discipline is worse for students with darker skin?”

Alex nods.

“Sometimes things that should be handled by teachers get reported to the police. I’m also pretty sure my sister didn’t do anything wrong.”

“That fuss in the hallway yesterday?” Gertie suggests.

“She got shoved, not the other way around. She did everything right.”

“Yes but I hear the nurse made a fool of the principal. And isn’t this ‘football’ game happening tomorrow?”

This time it is Alex’s turn to laugh at the air quotes.

“Yes. And the player who attacked my sister has to sit out the game, so we are going to lose unless there’s a hurricane or something.”

Gertie taps her fingers on the windowsill.

“I have noticed that Americans care a great deal about this football nonsense.”

That’s when it clicks in Alex’s brain.

_The principal works for the school board, the school board is up for election and the fans in the town are damned lunatics. He would do anything to boost the football team._

“Gertie,” Alex asks.

“Hmm?”

“During first period, were there police dogs in your wing of the building?”

Gertie nods, making a loose golden curl dance across her forehead.

“Which is where Kara’s locker is. Fuck.”

“Oh, that? We have fucking in Sweden too,” Gertie chortles.

Alex leaps out of her chair and storms across the hall. The secretary sputters something at her but she walks right past. A pair of police officers are in the principal’s office along with a trembling, weeping Kara. A third officer steps in front of Alex.

“Let me in. Unless you’ve already contacted our mom and gotten permission to interrogate her?”

The officer practically dives out of her way. Alex throws his door open hard enough that it bounces against the wall.

“Alex!” Kara squeaks. “I’m sorry! I didn’t—I don’t even know what’s going on!”

There’s a fat zip-loc bag on the principal’s desk, filled with weed.

“Found this in her locker,” the police officer explains. “The principal said her grades have been slipping for a year.”

“Uh-huh. A year? She started _yesterday,_ asshole!”

Both cops start moving toward Alex.

“Not you guys, I’m talking to him.”

“I don’t suppose that the fact that my sister is black matters here?”

Both the cops shift uneasily and look away.

“Or maybe the fact that attacking her got the starting linebacker suspended before the game? The game that you _need to win_ if you want that donation from the booster club. Little bit of motive there,” Alex snarls.

“I don’t suppose that would have _anything_ to do with this sudden realization you had about the contents of my sisters locker. Which you just so happen to have a key to. Did you find her fingerprints?”

 _Good luck finding_ _Kara’s p_ _rints with her flinch reflex._ It will be a challenge to calm Kara down enough to let them ink her fingers. Her body likes to keep a couple millimeters between between her skin and anything else.

“I don’t like your tone, young lady!”

“Which isn’t an answer, Mister Jensen.”

“There was an assault?” One of the cops asks.

Alex turns.

“Yes, sir. Rather, yes ma’am.”

She’s so pissed she had not even realized the cop was a woman.

“Robert Tolson. He weighs two-twenty, she only weighs a hundred if she’s got her backpack on. He threw her into the locker hard enough to dent it. Concussion. She had to get a tetanus shot. Let me guess. That was never reported but this was?”

Alex leaves out the part where she and a length of PVC piping put him in traction.

The cop frowns, her eyes swinging back toward Principal Jensen.

“Assaults are supposed to be reported. No exceptions.”

“Typical small town bullshit!” Alex shouts. “Worried you’ll lose the game? Grab some drugs, throw them in a locker to get rid of the black girl. Get the football player back. Guy who runs the car dealership buys a new practice field, maybe throws in a new car for you.”

“Officers, I’m going to reach into my pocket now. Very slowly.”

Alex goes for her wallet and pulls out a business card. The nuclear option.

It’s jet black with engraved silver lettering. She slides it over to the principal. Both the officers stand up much straighter. They’ve heard of the law firm, like every cop in the country. People who hire this firm _win_ and anyone who looks funny at one of their clients risks a blizzard of lawsuits. The founding partner -- Donna Troy -- is a high-fashion giantess who appears equally often in legal quarterlies, Vogue photoshoots and tabloids.  A sun-yellow Mazerati rolls up to the Oscars every year and Troy climbs out into a barrage of paparazzi, dressed to kill and towering over whatever swooning actor or actress is on her arm.

When Principal Jensen sees the words ‘Donna Troy, Esq.’ the blood leaves his face.

Their mom doesn’t know Alex has this card but when a flying woman with a epic good hair, a sword and magic rope lands in the backyard and offers something to help Kara, Alex is not one to say no. Her keeping this secret can be a thing Eliza is mad at when they’re all safe at home.

“Kara, do not say another word. We are calling your lawyer. Then mom.”

“ _Tias,”_ Kara whispers. “ _Tias, a-rahki.”_

“ _Vymi,”_ Alex replies. “Anytime, sister.”

Alex grabs the principal’s desk phone and starts dialing. It only rings twice before the receptionist picks up. Alex puts it on speaker.

“Troy, Cale and Sinclair, how may I direct your call?”

Alex breathes deep, trying to sound as grown-up as possible.

“I need to speak to Donna Troy, immediately. My sister has been arrested. She is a minor and the police did not get permission to interrogate.”

“That _is_ unfortunate,” the receptionist replies. There’s a whimper but whether it was from the cops or the principal Alex isn’t sure.

“She is with a client right now. You are?”

“Alexandra Danvers. Please tell Ms Troy that her sister gave me this card and did so in person. You can bill it to account 1219.”

“Gladly, madam. I’ll let her know as soon as she’s out of the meeting. In the meantime, tell your sister to say nothing and get names and badge numbers of everyone involved. Can I get a call back number for you?”

Alex rattles off her mother’s cell phone number and hangs up. She puts one hand on Kara’s shoulder and taps the card with her other hand.

“Your move, principal.”

Principal Jensen is white as a sheet. The star of their debate team and top of class is looking at him like a rabid animal.  Alex looks like she wants to rip his throat open with her teeth. She made him look like an idiot in front of the cops and then name-dropped the founder of the most vicious law firm in New York. A name which she got through family connections has an account with. Whoever gave her that card is willing to burn _millions_ of dollars on this case.

He has never been this surprised in thirty years of teaching. He mutters something but all she catches is ‘Alex’.

Kara straightens a little under Alex’s hand. She must have liked what she heard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I heartily encourage criticism and tips and smacks upside the head. This is not exactly a case of "writing what I know" so there are times when I'm stretching my comfort zone with the military protocol, the smut, the racial tensions and the concerns of WLW, MLM and other queers.
> 
> Chime in, y'all!


	3. A Kink For Cybernetic Tattoos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":  
> Where Eliza dual-fists some daughter hugs, Kara can't even sit like a straight, Kara just owns at gift giving, Alex reveals some personal stuff, Kara wishes for brain bleach and Kolex gets some pancake batter on his housing, a tech Hobbitt finds his hobbit hole, Kara's high school sweetheart is not woke and regrets it, Daxamites are not quality people, Kara's entitlement peeks out, only the fearless have Twitter handles that are hella gay, Winn has Kara's back and we learn that not all blue-skinned alien sex kittens are keepers.
> 
> OUR NEXT EXCITING EPISODE:  
> Where Alex gains a level in Fighter, a wild Vasquez appears, Alex gives Winn a shovel talk, Alex meets a well-dressed officer, regrets her online gaming and goes down the rabbit hole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> STYLE GUIDE:
> 
> Italics in quotes (i.e. out loud) is foreign languages.  
> Italics are thoughts/observations.  
> Brackets [ ] are interactions with artificial intelligences and cybernetics.  
> Bold and block-quoted passages are recorded messages, songs or poems.

**August 16** **, 200** **2** **|** **Kara Danvers**

Midvale, Maryland

Danvers Household

 

Eliza has her arm around Kara. Ever since the police visited school, she has kept Kara very close. Kara once had a pet _talaq_ that acted this way but only during molting season when it needed her body heat.

 _She just wants a hug,_ Kara reminds herself.

“I’m all right, Eliz—mom.”

“I don’t think you’ve called me that before,” Eliza whispers.

“Seemed important,” Kara admits. “For you to hear it. I’ll try to do it more.”

She shifts under Eliza’s arm, putting her head in her mom’s lap and throwing her legs over the armrest. Kara hasn’t been allowed to go back to school. She got suspended while the school district ‘looked into it’. None of them trust the principal not to try anything and according to Alex, all anyone talks about is the football game and Kara ‘ruining it’. Alex had to explain several Earth slurs to Kara this week and those were just the ones that came in the mail.

Alex comes in the front door, shaking her umbrella.

“It’s a mess out there. But…” she teases, shaking a red shopping bag with black lettering and the outline of Wonder Woman’s sword on it.

Kara wiggles in excitement. Alex says it looks like a kitten getting ready to pounce.

“That new ice cream place was open.”

“Elysian Creamery?” Kara asks, getting up so quick that she shakes the floor. “Yes!”

Their mom rolls her eyes.

“Did you know they sell homework?” Alex blurts out, rubbing the back of her head. “It’s really similar to your school homework, which I definitely remembered.”

Kara smiles. Alex’s heart rate is up and her skin is warmer than usual. She’s lying about the homework but something smells really good, so she wasn’t lying about the ice cream.

Eliza looks at Alex, mouths the word ‘phone’ and nods towards the hall.

“Thank you, Alex.”

“It’s all good. And next time I will remember _before_ I leave.”

“Mom?” Kara asks. “Alex?”

“Can I show you something after dinner?”

Eliza pulls Kara close and kisses her hair.

“Sure.”

Alex crosses her arms.

“Is this that thing you were building in the garage?”

Every morning this week Alex has complained to her about to the smell of solder or the whir of the electric screwdriver. When she came downstairs, Kara had to use superspeed to get it all under the tarp in time.

“Maybe?” Kara squeaks. “It’s sort of the next model after that?”

“Will it electrocute me?”

“No. It will not definitely do that.”

Alex goes to the sink and wrings her jacket out. When she comes back, Kara and her mom have each cracked open an ice cream. The one left on Alex’s seat is the ‘Tartarus’ Depths Dark Chocolate Coffee’ flavor which is really all she can expect. She did leave Kara and a pint of ‘Persephone’s Gaze Peppermint’ unattended, after all.

Kara is disappointed. Alex should know her better by now.

Eliza turns off the lights and sits back down, putting one arm over each daughter.

“Let’s just sit here and listen to the storm for a while, girls.”

“And eat ice cream,” Kara mumbles past the spoon in her mouth.

“Yes. Also that.”

The storm is coming hard from the east, tiny stinging drops that drum against the windows. It sounds a little bit like a gum ball machine, Kara decides. Lots of small things rattling together.

The phone in Eliza’s office is ringing. She opens one eye and looks at her office before sinking back into the cushions.

“Hell with it. Too comfy. They can leave a message.”

“You swear more than you used to,” Alex notices.

“Happens when you take in a cute alien,” Eliza yawns. “Lots of paperwork. Holes in the roof. Locks for the attic windows. Barrels of pancake mix. Tiring. Perfect, but tiring.”

Eliza slips away, wrapped in a throw blanket with a daughter under each arm.

Alex leans over towards Kara.

“Asleep?” She whispers.

“Yeah,” Kara replies, slipping out and tucking Eliza in.

Kara grabs her hand and hurries towards the garage. Alex makes a startled grunt.

“Wrist bones!” she reminds Kara.

“Right. Sorry. I just wanted to let you pick first.”

Throwing the tarp back, Kara groans. Under it is a serious of steel tubes with heavy electrical cabling and hydraulic pistons. It looks a bit like a four-armed person with no legs and blowtorches on three of the four hands. Everything leads to a shiny black sphere in the middle. The wires don’t go inside, they just touch the surface.

“So…the frame is a lost cause.”

“Frame?”

“Remember when I told you about Kolex?”

Alex nods.

“Robot butler?”

“Butler, tutor, guard, nurse, best friend, partner in crime. One time, we spread _twellin_ seeds in my dad’s lab when he was testing levitation suits for high-rise maintenance crews. They’re tiny, perfectly round, hard seeds. He fell down and Kolex had to catch him. I was grounded for three days. You’d call that about five months.”

Alex leans against the door.

“Sounds like a good friend. You said he got turned into some sort of implant while you were in your pod. So that’s a new body for Kolex?”

Kara shakes her head.

“It’s not even close to good enough. If I had more precision tools, I could build a crude prototype. Once I had that, the prototype could help me improve it generation by generation. There are parts we can’t make on Earth _without_ Kolex to help. Ugh! I just need to get started _!”_ She grumbles, kicking a piece of sheet metal.

Alex rolls her eyes.

“As cool as a not-robot is, I’m guessing that isn’t what you wanted to show me.”

“Oh! Right.”

When she realized no one ever _uses_ the boat on the trailer in the corner of the garage, Kara hid all her projects under it. She lifts it up and grabs the tool box.

“You just tucked that crate under an eight-ton boat like it was your mattress? Of course you did,” Alex mutters. “Side note? Don’t look under my mattress.”

Kara giggles.

“I think Nala Zenn would have loved to meet you. She was my second favorite aunt. Great-aunt. Secret’s safe with me.”

Alex sticks her tongue out.

“So,” Kara asks, opening the box. “Black or red?”

Inside are two discs of coil wire the size of Kara’s hand, pulsing with a faint light.

“Are those?” Alex asks.

“Yep. Two exact copies of Kolex’s hardware. Used up all of my computational crystal from the survival kit and most of the nanotube casing too.”

“What do they do,” Alex asks, eyes wide.

Kara pulls her braid aside. A circular blue mark the size of a quarter flickers on her skin like a neon sign. Five half-circular marks spin within the outer ring.

“Kolex?” Kara asks. “Explain to Alex and assign whichever one she picks.”

“Understood. Greetings, Lady Alex. Those are communications and analysis devices based on Military Guild recording kits, designed for implantation in the outer layers of skin. Three computer cores with eight quantum vibrators each, linked with optical mesh. They communicate with the host via bone conduction and pressure sensors and can project onto the optical nerve. They carry a sensor suite for sound, visible light, infrared and ultraviolet along with atmosphere composition. Electrical charge is maintained via thermal, photoelectric and kinetic collectors. The outer casing is a three-layer tungtsen and car-“

Kara snaps her fingers.

“Did you just mute him?”

“That sounds like an advertisement, not a proper summary. He’s been rambling lately,” Kara sighs. “I think he misses having a body.”

“So these are ‘tattoos’ that are really computers that are probably more a million times more powerful than anything humans have ever built…and you want me to have one?”

Kara scuffs her feet on the cement.

“They’re cool-looking!” Kara exclaims. “And I want to know I can always talk to you if we don’t have a phone nearby.”

Alex throws her arms around her.

“I was teasing. This is awesome. I think you’re off the hook for Christmas.”

“Black or red?”

“Ooh! Black, please.”

Kara lifts the black one out of the box, peeling the anti-contaminant gel off.

“Where do you want it?”

Alex blushes.

“It’ll be visible at all times, right? Whether or not it is lit up?”

Kara nods.

“Remember how you said you looked under my mattress?”

“So like the photo in that magazine?”

“Yeah.”

“I hate you so much right now,” Kara mutters. “All right. Lift your shirt. Might as well get this over with so I can drink until I forget.”

“Human booze doesn’t work on you, rem-“

Alex bites her fist to silence the scream.

“Guess I deserved that.”

“Oh! Did I forget to tell you that these enter the skin through laser incision? Whoops! Probably should wear sports bras for a while. Hold everything as still as possible. The circuitry takes a couple days to link up with nerves and muscle groups nearby.”

“What do you know about bras?” Alex grumbles. “Your whole body ignores physics.”

“I know that I have to wear one to fit in, bras come in different colors and are much more convenient than pretending to be a member of a different species so that the government never finds out I exist.”

Alex swallows.

“Yeah. I bet they are. Sorry, sis.”

Kara shrugs.

[Greetings, Lady Alex.]

She heard that but not through her ears. The ache in her scalp alone is enough to prove that was the implant.

“Kara!” Alex screams. “Get back here! You didn’t say you turned it on!”

A trail of flickering static leads straight out the garage door. It’s far too late to chase her down now. She owes Kara a pillow to the face.

 

* * *

 

 **August 16** **, 200** **2** **| Alex Danvers**

Alex is too excited to move. She has an alien supercomputer implanted her brain – or her breasts at any rate – and gradually growing into her body.  All because her sister wanted to say thanks for protecting her from the skeezy principal framing her for a felony.

Which is Big Sister 101.

This was really sweet of Kara.

“Hello?” Alex says into thin air.

[If you prefer, you can communicate non-verbally.]

[How?] Alex asks.

[Simple. Move your mouth but don’t exhale. Over time, I will learn to read the muscle movements better. Eventually, I will read patterns the signals your facial nerves receive and it will require only thinking about speaking.]

Alex snorts.

[Simple, right. You sound like Kara. Your voice, I mean.]

[It is typical for us to have traces of our creator in our patterns. Speech patterns, inflections, so on. They often fade over time.]

[Creator? Like mother?]

[More like a clone, as you understand it. I was branched from Kolex’s hardware, who has been implanted in Kara for many of your years. So her brain has influenced his circuitry and functions. Does that make sense, Lady Alex?]

[Please don’t call me ‘Lady’. It feels…weird.]

[Alex, though? Despite your documentation?]

[Yes, please. What do I call you? I’m not calling you ‘servant’. I would rather have you be a friend, especially if you’re in my head.]

[Echo?]

She thinks for a minute. It sounds pretty but it isn’t a name people use so no one will think she’s talking to herself. If she gets one of those cell phone ear-pieces it would look one hundred percent normal.

[Echo sounds good. But it should be what you want.]

[I think I like Echo.]

Alex slumps against the door. Her head is pounding. No doubt a side effect of being the first human ever to have a super-computer shoved under their skin. Kara wouldn’t have done this if it was dangerous.

[This really hurts, Echo. How long does it last?]

[A few hours. First time neurological synchronization can be difficult, even for Kryptonians. The farther the host deviates from that biochemistry, the more painful it can be.]

Alex groans.

[So it couldn’t be worse? I’m as far from Kryttonian as you get.]

[Actually, it would be far worse for a Helgrammite, Morae or even a Thessalian. Their bodies operate quite differently on a chemical and mechanical level. Human and Kryptonian anatomy and biochemistry are strangely similar. Kara has some unique cellular structures and her bone structures, muscle and nerve sheathing is quite different from yours. Her muscles still operate on chemical reactions based on electrical signals from her brain, transmitted on nerves. Her skeleton is near-identical to humans, minus vestigial tail bones and so on. Her organs have analogous organs in your body and vice versa. It is a matter of scale and efficiency.]

[She can fly! That’s more than scale.]

[Yes. Kara’s skin takes in and expels energy, primarily as heat and electricity. She is exceptionally well-suited metabolically to a system with a yellow star and thus higher than average light radiation. In her case, many centuries of genetic upgrades and selective breeding by one of Krypton’s wealthiest families also played a role.]

Alex reminds herself to ask Kara later about being a god-damned space princess and not telling her. Maybe she has something she can pawn so Alex can finally get a car.

[Krypton’s star wasn’t yellow?]

[What you would call a red dwarf. The uranium level in the crust was far higher than Earth’s and the planet’s orbit was closer than Venus is in this system. Solar radiation on the surface was also much higher so Kryptonian life evolved to capture, process and expel radiation and radioactive particles. In times of hardship, it is a partial food source.]

Alex sighs. Echo could no doubt tell her anything she wanted about Krypton but right now all she can think about is that it feels like red-hot wires are being shoved into her skull.

[Shall I use a neural pulse to relieve the pain?] Echo offers.

[You could have done that at any time, couldn’t you?]

[Yes. Lady Kara made me promise to do at least one prank.]

[Never do one like that again.]

Whatever Echo did, it really works. Alex can walk if she’s careful but she’s mostly numb from the neck down. Before she lets go of the wall, Alex slaps the garage door button. No way is someone stealing her sister’s sort-of-robot until they can finish it.

Maybe she and Kara can get it running for Halloween.

* * *

 

* * *

 

* * *

 

 **October** **24** **, 200** **2** **| Eliza Danvers**

Midvale, Maryland

Danvers Household

 

Eliza hears a popping sound behind her, accompanied by a flash of light. She thumps Kolex on the ‘head’ with her spatula. It leaves a smear of pancake batter on the teal-and-silvertrim that Kara chose.

 _Three days_ , she tells herself. _Three days since the girls booted this thing up and I think the rest of my hair has_ _already_ _gone gray._

“Please don’t do that,” she wheezes. “I don’t want to have a heart attack.”

“Apologies, Lady Danvers. In the future, I will appear at a more distant point and announce my approach using auditory cues.”

Being addressed like a queen is something she _can_ get used to.

“Sounds good. What is it, Kolex?”

“I believe you have a phone call coming.”

Sure enough, the phone is ringing.

Eliza starts past but Kolex puts his hand — four metal fingers — on her shoulder.

“Be careful, please. The phone call is coming from a source that is masked. It has high encryption…by this planet’s standards.”

“Please,” Eliza moans. “No. Not that.”

Jeremiah never told her what exactly was happening but the job offer came two weeks after they took in Kara. Eliza told him it was suspicious as hell but he couldn’t help himself. If he got sweet Kara mixed up with some spooky agency, divorce will be the least of his problems.

“Play it directly, Kolex.”

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Danvers, my name is Cameron Chase. I’m the FBI agent that was assigned to your husband’s disappearance. I just got the case this morning.”

“Disappearance?” Eliza snaps. “He disappeared?”

“Yes. Were you not-“

The sound of glass shattering on the other end of the line startles Eliza.

“Sorry. I have a rule: whenever someone fucks me over, I smash one of my shot glasses on the floor. I have a feeling this is one of those times.”

Eliza sniffs. It _was_ funny but laughing isn’t something she can do right now.

“No one told you he was missing, I take it?”

“No, they said he was on assignment with the NIS. He had to stay on-site because the anomaly was visible for a short time. Something about an observatory in Peru. We’re both professors. Truth is that he has disappeared into his work before…just usually while here at the house. Eleven weeks isn’t even a record.”

“So you didn’t even know there was a case?”

“No.”

“Jesus motherfucking Christ,” Chase snarls. “Sorry, Mrs. Danvers.”

“Jewish,” Eliza replies. “So no harm done.”

“Ah. Right. Ma’am, I don’t know how to tell you this but your husband is dead.”

“What?”

“We found him thirteen days ago. Multiple gunshot wounds from a high-caliber rifle. I was told that while in Peru he was recruited by a drug cartel but that really felt like a reach for an astrophysicist. Given that this was referred to me using a DC phone number that it says was the Drug Enforcement Agency, but is actually _disconnected,_ I’m starting to think this file is one hundred percent bullshit.”

“Thirteen days?”

“Yes. According to this, they told you the next day. Clearly not.”

“What else can you tell me?” Eliza croaks.

Agent Chase sighs.

“That’s most of it, actually. We found some shell casings near his body that do not match his wounds. It might be that he was also armed and returned fire. His wallet was present with his ID, some cash and a picture of you and your daughter.”

“Daughter?”

 _Daughter, singular._ Eliza tells herself. _That’s something. Jeremiah must have already been suspicious if he didn’t take a photo that had Kara in it. We must have taken hundreds those first couple of weeks._

“Yes. Reddish hair? No offense to him but she has your eyes.”

Eliza sniffs.

“Alex. Our only child. They were really close.”

“I bet she needs her mom, then. Don’t worry about arrangements. I was contacted by a law firm who will take care of the body. I’ll make sure you get him back.”

“Which law firm, if I may ask?”

“Troy, Cale and Sinclair,” Chase replies. “He had really good life insurance, I take it?”

“All of our insurance is shit, actually. University policy. We’ve just made some good friends the last few years. Call me if you learn anything new?”

“Yes ma’am. This case is staying on my desk until I solve it. I don’t like being lied to,” Chase mutters. “Or lying _to_ people. And I _hate_ hurting families.”

Eliza glances at Kolex draws a finger across her throat. He ends the call.

That’s where Kara finds her hours later, curled up and sobbing.

 

* * *

 

 

**(3 YEARS LATER)**

 

 

* * *

 

 **August 30** **, 2005 | Winn Schott**

National City University

National City, California 

Honors Dorms, Lobby and Room 713 

 

 

Winn has class in an hour and he needs to get this stuff into his room.

_Shit shit shit, I’m going to be late._

“Hold the elevator!” He shouts, dragging three giant suitcases behind him. It is quite literally everything he owns. The foster home wouldn’t even let him rent a storage unit for it. They had already cashed the last check from the state.

Just before the doors seal, a hand shoots out and claps over the rubber seal on the top part of the door. The doors slide back and stay back.

 _Blocked the safety sensors,_ Winn realizes. _Smart one._

There’s only one person in the elevator but she has seven bags with her, each the size of his. She puts her phone in her pocket and gives him a mile-wide smile.

“Need a hand?”

“Yep,” he grunts. “About four hands, actually.”

“Can do!” she chortles, stepping out of the elevator.

"I'm Kara."

Winn is not sure how to deal with the fact this woman exists.

It’s like someone blended the cutest parts of all the Disney princesses – at least if Disney had the balls to have black girls be princesses – and put them through bespoke artisanal puberty while making sure they competed in the Olympics for a well-rounded life.

Her eyes are big and golden, drawing his focus up to her ebony face even though she’s a foot taller than he is. She’s long-limbed, big-hipped and broad-shouldered and those acid-washed jeans hang around her like they're glad for the invite.

Hard to say if she wore the shirt to show off her abs or her breasts.  

Despite the tight shirt, he doesn’t see any bra outline. The fact that she doesn’t need one to achieve that must have made her high school classmates really mad.  

That must be her ‘show off my boobs’ shirt.

She flicks some lint of off her hand her triceps jump out.  The shirt rides up giving a peek at the bands of muscle underneath.  

Turns out the was the ‘show off my abs’ shirt after all.

A thick braid of curly silver hair falls all the way down her back, tied off in three places with blue ribbons.

_Have to ask her where she gets it straightened and dyed. That is awesome work._

If Winn was straight, he would be making a huge ass of himself.

Instead he resigns himself to losing any man not four thousand percent gay to those nugget-of-gold eyes. If he’s really lucky, she’s gay. If not she’s straight in for a world of trouble walking around with no makeup and looking that ripped in a white muscle shirt.

“Won’t it close?”

“Nope,” She chortles. “Neat huh? It pauses for six minutes and fifteen seconds after a safety error like that.”

Winn cannot believe it. She’s a gear-head. Clearly, God is testing both his gayness and his patience.

“I drove here. Got in real early and had to hang out in the lobby so I was maybe a little bored last night. I learned a lot about the elevators, the fire alarm. Oh! Did you know that the heating system actual-“

Winn waves his free hand in front of her to make her stop talking.

“I get it! Engineering major. Which is great, I really agree. But I think little old me is going to lose an arm here if I keep trying to hold this up.”

“Uh, journalism, psych and sociology actually. But I appreciate the vote of confidence!”

She grabs his heaviest bag and heads towards the elevator. She doesn’t even grunt when she hoists it. Towering over him — in flats! — she struts towards the elevator, hair bouncing behind her.

She manages to get all their stuff in at once. This whole thing is surreal. It’s sort of _America’s Next Top Model_ meets the _World Championships of Tetris_ , he decides.

“Engineering. Winn Schott.”

“Danvers,” she purrs. “Kara Danvers.”

They look at each other, saying nothing. Once they start, they end up cackling all the way up to seventh floor.

“Seventh. You too?”

She leans close so she can whisper to him or so that her head is near his head, down here at sea level. One or the other.

“I actually signed up for the mixed-gender suites. The pilot program with the giant disclaimer and like nine billion questions.”

“Me, too. Huh.”

“Huh,” she agrees. “Jinx! You already said that.”

She grabs her phone, glances at it and then at him.

“Wait as second. Are you ‘GaysForTheWinn’?”

His username sounds ridiculous when she says it.

“Guilty? Besides. KDlang? You’re one to talk!”

“Yeah,” Kara sighs. “My sister did that account for me. My initials, or that was her excuse. Then she enlisted in the Army and I didn’t want to touch it. I’m going to make her change it when she gets back, you see.”

“What’s wrong with KDlang?” she asks.

“Thing is, well, ah…”

Winn rubs the back of his head. Speaking of Disney princesses, is she really that innocent? Here he is, a white male and a gay, having to explain to this dark-skinned _specimen_ with a butch style that queer women are going to be sniffing around her based on internet handle alone.

_What the hell is wrong with my Tuesdays lately? It’s gone all Twilight Zone._

The elevator doors bails him out before he has to start mansplaining lesbian folk-rock from the 1990s. The moment the door dings, she takes his bags.

“Really, it’s fine,” he protests.

“No. Roommates don’t let roommates break their arms.”

Nine trips.  He counted. She made the bare minimum number of trips to move who knows how many pounds of stuff to the other end of the building.  No breathers, just a quick stretch before grabbing each pair of bags.

“Where do you work out? Inside a black hole?”

Kara freezes. He’s not sure what it was but he knows he said the wrong thing. Winn has gotten very good at knowing when he said the wrong thing. He used to get beat black and blue by his father when he said the wrong thing. Now he just loses friends.

“Kara? You all right?”

“Zoned out for a minute there,” she replies. “I think it’s California. It’s really messing with my brain.”

“How so?”

“Clear weather, cool air, lots of sun. I wanna curl up in a sunbeam and take a nap. Like a kitten!”

That does it. He is definitely warning her about the risks of calling herself ‘a kitten’ and using ‘KDlang’ on Twitter and wearing muscle shirts. At this point, he would be a bad friend not to. Her phone alarm goes off and the ringtone is the red alert sound from Star Trek. Because of course it is. She’s all of his wildest dreams. Tragic that she’s female.

“And I’m ready late for class,” she sighs. “Dang.”

“Yeah,” Winn sighs. “Me too. I might as well set up the total loser mobile over here.”

He unzips the largest suitcase--the one with his computer in it, he has priorities--and wriggles behind the desk on his side to start running cables. He can’t really see her through the crack but she just keeps talking.

“I’m sure it’s not that bad, Winn. Lots of women like sharp dressers.”

“Ooh!  And you’re really polite,” she adds, counting on her fingers. “No boob-staring, which is always nice. No leaning too close on ‘accident’. Five out of five, would be trapped in elevator again.”

“Two desks,” Kara observes. “So why three beds?”

“Have a friend over?” Winn suggests.

“It’s a much bigger bed, though. Admitting defeat? Realizing that it’s the 21st century and college students fuck each other?”

He jerks his head up into the desk so fast he knocks himself out.

 

Winn comes back to the world with blurry vision and an ice pack on his head. Kara must have put him in his bed and taken his glasses off. She also built a wall around his bed with their combined suitcases. Despite being made of a dozen bags of various colors, sizes and brands, it does not wobble. He would have to stand on tiptoe to see over them.

She walled off his bed for a little privacy, using luggage like LEGOs and it looks solid.

 _She built that for fun? College of Engineering recruiters really screwed the pooch,_ he thinks. _That or her high school physics teacher was a total pervert._

“I love the way you’ve done your hair, Kara. It’s better all springy and bushy. I can lose my hand in it.”

There’s a startled yelp.

“Right there,” hisses a female voice. A voice that is obviously not Kara’s voice.

“Can you put your hand in my-uhhh!”

Whatever she asked Kara for she got because the voice is no longer making whole words.

“Is that good?” Kara coos.

_New rule of the universe. Kara needs to stop acting like the human embodiment of cotton candy if she’s going to be having sex in our room._

Winn was just retroactively scarred as a child.

“Fucking unreal,” her date pants. “I can’t believe I scored a Daxamite.”

There’s a silence so total that even Winn knows that something is wrong.

“Get off me,” Kara snarls. “Now.”

“Babe,” her playmate sputters. “It was a compliment, Kara. It just kind of fell out.”

“Get out of my room! But first, give me your phone.”

“What? Why?”

“Clearly it’s so I can take my number out.”

“No! Please. I’m sorry, Kara.”

“It’s…that’s not who I am. Not what I am,” Kara hisses.

 _She sounds pissed._ Winn makes a mental note. _Daxamites bad, do not call her one._

“But,” her date sputters. “That thing you did…”

 _Nope!_  Winn absolutely does not need more than that.

“Fuck me,” the girl mumbles. “You’re not Daxamite. But only a Daxamite could do that. That would mean you would hav-” she rambles before stopping suddenly.

“Bless the Black! You’re a Kryptonian?”

_Daxamites and Kryptonians? Bless the Black? Are these metal bands? Feel like I heard some of this before._

Winn isn’t sure if he’s glad for the suitcases or not. Whoever this girl is, he will be stuck with a the talk with Kara when this is over. It might be easier if the other girl knew he was here.

“And since you’re suddenly looking at me like you just peeled me off your shoe, you didn’t grow up a rim-rat or a duster. Which means you’re a-”

_Rim-rat? Duster? I need a whole binder for this ‘Weird Kara Shit’._

Next thing he knows, a mostly naked woman with tiny turquoise scales and a bunch of tentacle-ish things on her head hits his suitcase wall. Wisps of white flame lick across her skin, scorching the carpet and Kara’s shirt but Kara doesn’t seem to even feel it.

“Don’t say it,” Kara warns, just above a growl. “Not here.”

It looks like Kara had grabbed her date by the shirt and threw her into the suitcases. Kara seems just as shocked as Winn when she realizes she did this. She turns away, hanging her head.

“Sorry!” Kara blurts, lip trembling. “Shouldn’t have touched you like that. What I just did was very wrong, Emilia. I’m not going to hurt you. Go. Just go.”

“S’okay, babe. Probably should have skipped the rim-rat. I knew you weren’t like them,” she nods her head towards Winn. “But I didn’t ask where you were from and I should have. It kind of knocked me on my ass when I realized.”

Emilia laces her hand through her hair-tentacles.

“Just…damn! Think what I could have had!”

Kara tries to laugh but it’s more of a sniffle.

“It’s a tragedy, I know. Ugh! Stop being all funny and half-naked and tempting me and just leave. Be safe, Emilia.”

The blue woman with tentacle hair — Tuesdays! — pulls her rather scandalous top back on and wriggles into black leggings.  She puts her hand on the inside knob of the door and looks back at Kara.

“I think I’m going to regret that one word the rest of my life, Kara. I hope someone meets you and spends the rest of their life thanking the Black. Take care of her...human man in a sweater whose name I don’t know.”

“It’s Winn...Emilia the space lady with the light-myself-on-fire reflex.”

“Plasma. Winn, I’m serious. She’s very special, this one.”

Emilia breathes deep and then the air around her turns into that white fire and she disappears. The dorm room door opens itself and invisible feet press into the carpet.

“Don’t know why she cloaked,” Kara mutters. “She was perfectly decent.”

Winn chokes.

“Um, Kara…because having a shirt on maybe isn’t enough for her not to get looks?”

Kara flops down onto her bed.

“What is it going to take to get you not to tell anyone? I mean, you saw that, right?”

“Alien girl clam-jamming herself? Yep.”

He makes a hard pop at the end of ‘yep’.

“No, not her. Me. I’m an alien too, Winn. A Kryptonian and, even more important, I grew up on the homeworld. Almost all of us are dead now.”

“Kryptonian...” he muses. “Isn’t that what Superman always says he is?”

Kara arches an eyebrow.

“Oh. Oh! Yeah, that tracks,” he agrees. “It explains the muscles, for one thing.”

“You basically have my life in your hands now. There are people who grab aliens, torture them and cut them up. There’s like, bounties for different species. For someone like me it’s ‘win the lottery’ money. And there’s not a damn thing I could do to stop you.”

“Superman is pretty tough.”

Kara’s face tightens.

“So am I but I don’t kill people so I really couldn’t stop you, now could I?”

_She thinks I would kill let someone kill her? For money?_

“Kara, I really haven’t had any friends. Like ever. So you’re the first chance I’ve had. We met four hours ago and already you think I’m a monster?”

“What? “No.”

He sighs.

“So there’s your answer. Only monsters get their friends killed. Besides, I’m one of like ten people who know about aliens now, aren’t I?”

She holds up both hands, drops one, and then wiggles four fingers.

“With you, it’s four. Far as I know. So…what are your thoughts on bribery?” she pleads, batting her eyelashes.

Winn puts his eyeglasses back on the bedside table. He is not built for rough work. His head is pounding.

“Bribe me with your story?”

Kara’s face lights right back up.

“Oh, I can do that. Actually,” she sighs, kicking her feet back and forth against her bedframe.

“I would like to. I don’t get to tell my story, much. Just not sure about telling it here.”

Winn sits up and knocks a few of the suitcases over so he can actually see all of her. Seems like the sort of thing a good friend should do.

“Worried about spies?” He asks.

“Little bit worried, yeah. Public university and I have no idea how deep it goes, who funds it or who in government is in on this.”

She sighs.

“Kolex, activate your chassis. I need a scan of the room. Is there anything broadcasting in here on any frequency?”

“At once, Lady Kara.”

Somehow, the tattoo on her neck is moving and glowing and also talking and…Winn’s brain is going at full speed, pinballing from one bit of Kara-adjacent weird to the next.

_His roomie is nice to scrawny guys who can’t even move their own shit._

_His roomie is scared and maybe a little broken._

_His roomie is stupid hot._

_His rommie is stupid buff._

_His roomie is gay or maybe bi._

_His roomie is an alien._

“And now a robot just pops out of your suitcases and assembles itself!” Winn hollers. “In mid-air! Because of course it does!”

_His roomie has a shiny blue robot floating around the room checking things._

“How…is…your…life…so…much…more…awesome?” He growls.

“Feel better?” Kara teases.

“Actually, yeah. A little.”

“If I’m telling my tragic backstory, we’re getting takeout,” she decides. “Like, all the takeout. Thai sound good?”

Before he can answer, his stomach growls its agreement.

“Right.”

The moment he goes for his backpack, she points a finger at him. For all he knows, it shoots death rays or opens a portal to a universe of killer shrimp.

“I’m buying. You had to hear my messy breakup, so I owe you.”

A four armed robot with thrusters instead of legs floats over to him and scans him with some sort of white light, back and forth, back and forth.

“The room is clean, Lady Kara. Three well-concealed video cameras were located and disintegrated. The male human is not a clone or decoy.”

The robot thumps his shoulder with a metal fist.

“Don’t hurt her feelings, squishy. You have to sleep and I don’t.”

Some sort of triple-nozzle blowtorches pop out of all four robot arms and ignite.

_Did her robot just give me the shovel talk?_

“Kolex, be polite. His name is Winn. Add him to my safety protocols both on campus and in this room. Secondary protocols, at least for now.”

“Um, thanks?” He replies. “What’s secondary protocols mean?”

Kara doesn’t look up. Must be a big takeout order.

“That just means that if he isn’t sure if he can save both of us, he’ll protect me. Not sure that anything here can take Kolex on but I sort of have to live. Not personal. Maybe when I know you better or I can build more like him.”

 _There was something about ‘not many left’,_ Winn reminds himself. _Don’t want her failing her comic mission because of her idiot roommate._

“Was Emilia more than a hookup?” He asks.

“Yes,” Kara sniffs. “High school sweetheart. Together five months last week. Emilia was the only other one I’ve met so far. I'm so lucky that she was into women. This was the first time we’d had sex because, y’know, secret identities and small towns don’t mix,” she mumbles. “And then she says all that.”

Winn nods.

“I have no idea what that stuff meant but it sounded mean.”

“Pad Thai, peanut tofu?” She suggests.

“How about peanut chicken?” He asks. “I’m more into the cock.”

Kara laughs so hard she drops her phone.

“God, Winn! That was awful! So...you’re _not_ funny but you _are_ gay. That helps. I don’t have to worry about being,” she waves her arms wildly. “Whatever the hell that was. Is that being pansexual?”

“She looked pretty femme to me,” Winn teases. “That was straight lezzing. Well, I mean, not straight but...”

Kara’s body pillow smacks him across the chest.

“Thessalians. Genderless species,” she adds. “They all look like, well, that.”

_Did she just lick her lips? Blue girl was her type, I guess._

“If she’s non-conforming it’s pan,” Winn agrees. ”But I think we need a new letter. I feel like that ‘plus’ at the end doesn’t cover it in your case.”

Kara chews her lip.

“An asterisk, then. Because it looks like a star. And you’re okay with aliens? And here I am just assuming you’re human. Not nice to assume.”

“Are you kidding? I’m nerdgasming over here. So many questions! How many moons did your planet have? Did you use spaceships or gate thingies? Wormholes? Time travel? Is it actually quiet in space or did Star Wars get one thing right? Did you have energy swords?”

“Not on me,” she replies. “Might have the parts to build one, I suppose.”

“Argh!” Winn shouts. “You tease!”

“Yeah, I am. But I got us Thai for brunch so shush.”

 _First day is going pretty good,_ Winn decides. _Met the roomie, came to an understanding about the gay thing, made a friend. Discovered that aliens are FUCKING REAL._

 _College, schmollege._ Winn’s pretty sure that this is the first day of his life.


	4. Alex Get Your Gun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":  
> Where Alex gains a level in Fighter, a wild Vasquez appears, Alex gives Winn a shovel talk, Alex meets a well-dressed officer, regrets her online gaming and goes down the rabbit hole.
> 
> NEXT EXCITING EPISODE:  
> Where the guy in the chair is Winn, the Black Knight is anointed and the bros of Sigma Phi are brought to heel, Kara is chivalrous, Kara can now detect flirting on the second try and Kara has strong top energy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> STYLE GUIDE:
> 
> Italics in quotes (i.e. out loud) is foreign languages.  
> Italics are thoughts/observations.  
> Brackets [ ] are interactions with artificial intelligences and cybernetics.  
> Bold and block-quoted passages are recorded messages, songs or poems.

* * *

 

**August 21st, 2005 | Alex Danvers**

Fort Benning, Georgia

Home of the US Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment

(0200 hours)

 

Alex feels like shit. All of her muscles hurt. Her legs hurt. Her back hurts. The muscles inside her arteries that move the blood hurt, she’s pretty sure.

“Hot showers,” Alex whispers, hands outstretched to the nearly-scalding spray. “To the victor go the spoils.”

It’s a medical miracle she was vertical when she made it back to camp. All that mattered was that she was vertical. She finished three days of hell with Megan and Susan and seventy-one of the ninety-seven men they started with. Now she just needs to know if she passed the scoring. By her count, fourteen men who made lewd gestures at her for _months_ tapped out somewhere along the way.

If she’s lucky, Alex is one of the first three women allowed into the unit. It beats being satellite technician in that huge base in Baghdad. It was surreal reading and transmitting casualty reports in a place where the mess hall had a salad bar.

Grabbing the brush, she attacks her skin. Shaving her head was the best tip she got. Mud falls off her in clumps. The old fashioned alarm clock she set by the door hasn’t even gone off when she reaches for the towel.

“Already taking Army showers, Danvers?” Megan teases.

“Try it. I’m clean and I had twenty-three seconds to think.”

Megan walks past her, making sure to bump into Alex’s banged up shoulder. The more banged up one, anyway. She keeps acting like the most important thing is looking good on the cover of _Time_ once she passes.

 _Diva like her_ _in every school,_ Alex reminds herself.

Alex makes it back to her bunk without encountering any more mean girls. She glances at her cell phone. She hasn’t spoken to Kara in more than a year. Maybe she should reach out. Not knowing what Kara is up to is like an itch in the middle of her back. She can’t get it to go away, not without help.

_Cell phone is probably logged, maybe compromised. Bare minimum, I get laughed at for calling mommy._

“Echo?” She whispers.

[Why are we whispering? There are no intelligent life-forms in sixty meters!]

[Please contact Kara.]

Before Alex can even take a breath, she hears the sounds of cars honking, plates clinking and people chattering. Kara must have really pounced to answer that fast. Echo is fast and so is Kolex but it still takes time to steal a signal, encrypt a tunnel and route it.

“Alex, oh my god! I’m so glad you called!” Kara squeals.

“Winn, this is my sister!”

“Right, she enlisted, you said?”

It’s a man’s voice but compared to the men around here, he might as well be a TV set on mute. He’s either deeply shy or he’s afraid of Kara and she can’t even imagine someone being afraid of Kara.

_Heaven help me, it’s the first day of college and Kara already picked up a stray._

“You should call your sister more often,” Kara complains.

“Um, Iraq?” Alex reminds her. “Also, we were not speaking before I left.”

“I wasn’t angry! I was scared for you!” Kara sputters. “It’s not like me, Alex. You’re my sister and you know I support you but I worry. Unlike me, you can’t just…”

She trails off but she can hear the guy in the background snickering.

“Kara,” Alex snarls. “Did you tell him?”

“No?”

“I’m going to kill him,” Alex declares. “Messily. Give me his name and address.”

“Eww. No. Besides,” Kara sniffs. “Winn was really nice to me.”

Alex can see it: her sister with her hands on her hips, feet planted, shoulders squared, tall and muscular and somehow _still_ not intimidating. Turned into a gooey mess by a passing chipmunk or something.

“Um, Alex? Sir?”

Alex snorts.

“Sir? Now I want to kill him a tiny bit less.”

Winn says something she can’t make out.

“I sort of ruined Kara’s sexy-times with this nice…creature…and then I knew too much and she was really afraid I would out her and she would get hurt.”

“I had to break up with Emilia today, Alex. Like kick her out of bed in the act. He was there for me after.”

Someone taking care of Kara is not someone Alex is going to attack. Without cause.

“Kara! I don’t want to hear anything about my sister having sex but I want to hear what happened, when you’re ready.”

“Ugh,” Alex groans. “Now I have to be nice to him even though he knows too much.”

 _Deep breath. In, Out. In, Out._ She reminds herself. _Count backwards from thirty in Kryptontese._ _Right._ _Let’s try it_ _again, this time_ _from fifty._

Alex blows out a long breath and tries to remain calm.

“All right. Safety question. Why was he still in the room, Kara?”

“Oh!”

She can imagine Winn’s hand shooting up like an eager first-grader.

“I can explain that. I was wiring up our computers and hit my head on the desk when Sunshine Sparkles there dropped the F-bomb. Knocked myself out cold. I think she wanted to make sure I stayed alive. Anyway, she was worried so I just sort of offered to help hide it? Which is really hard because I mean, I get not wanting to be outed.”

 _He got_ _real_ _quiet there,_ Alex notes. _Gay? Maybe he was bullied?_

She has heard that hollowed-out sound in Kara’s voice. It broke her heart.

“But there is all this stuff that’s real now and I cannot tell anyone else about it. The make-believe stuff I dreamed of when I was a kid actually happens! This is like not telling people I’m room-mates with Jesus and her pet unicorn!”

Alex sighs.

“Figures she would find the only person who can ramble like she can.”

“Told you she’d like you,” Kara teases.

“I didn’t say that. Visual mode, Kara. Now.”

Echo throws up an image of Winn in front of her, keeping her own sensors angled so that neither of he nor Kara knows she is wearing a towel because she has nothing else that is not caked in mud.

Despite turning projecting all her worst fears on him and repeating the process for good measure Alex can only see a small, curly haired guy in a bow tie and something akin to one of Mr. Rogers’ sweater vests. They’re at a frozen yogurt place with a pile of dishes behind them.

Winn waves at her.

“Hi!”

He turns to Kara, looking disappointed.

“It’s just like, I don’t know...normal video chat. If it’s from a cybernetic implant, how is it on your phone, anyway?”

“Because you’re in public, dipshit! She can’t just bust out a hologram!”

“Oh, right.”

Alex pushes her fingers into her scalp and rubs. Hard.

“I swear to God, Kara. If I don’t get placed tomorrow because I’m losing my shit worrying about you…” she warns. “I…uh. I’ll think of something!”

“She has real trouble threatening me,” Kara tells Winn, elbowing him. “Think she likes me. Wait? Placed? So you ran the course?”

At this point, Echo decides to butt in.

“She did and she will pass.”

“Kara, there’s another voice.” Winn mumbles. “Girlfriend?”

“Her implant, silly. Alex is straight.”

 _Not that the guys off-base can tell. Is it the buzz cut or the muscles?_ Alex wonders.

“Alex completed the mechanical with the fourth highest score, highest in medic, highest in language and intelligence and was within the 98th percentile for females on the physical. She tied for top-performing female candidate and was in the 81st percentile of the male candidates. One hundred and eleven percent of minimum, if averaged across the board.”

“You don’t know any of that that,” Alex grumbles.

Echo scoffs.

“I do. Assembly of mechanical objects. First aid. Language translation. Speed. Distance. Lifting an object in Earth’s gravity. Assisting other soldiers with the same under clear guidelines. The Army may call it what they like but the entire course is quantifiable. And I measured it carefully. Unless the test is scored falsely, you will pass. With ‘flying colors’, whatever that is.”

“Echo, we’ve discussed this. It’s slang.”

“Winn, Echo. Echo, Winn.”

“Hail and well met, little hobbit.”

“Your sister’s implant is sassy,” Winn stage-whispers to Kara.

Alex can feel a headache coming on.

“So…yeah,” Kara tells Winn. “I think my sister is special forces now. Certified badass instead of just unofficial badass.”

“Hope so,” Alex huffs. “Otherwise I just got a lot of crazy bruises that the government spent almost a million dollars giving me. Look, sis. I love you, but I need to crash. When I actually know, I’ll reach out to mom, all right?”

“Me too!” Kara squeals.

“Fine. I’ll tell you too.”

Kara puts out her tongue and Alex responds in kind.

“Night, Alex!” Winn calls.

Alex flops into the bunk and screams Kryptonian curses into the pillow. If this Winn guy isn’t on the level, at least now she knows a lot of ways to kill him.

 

0615 hours

The colonel who supervised training is marching up and down the line, hands wrapped around a sheet of paper.

“Attention!”

Alex snaps to.

“According to this some of you are not useless. If I read your name, step forward and sound off like you mean it. If I don’t read your name, don’t say a fucking _word._ ”

“Able company, step forward!”

“Atkins!”

“Sir!”

“Benson!”

“Sir!”

“Cortez!”

“Sir!”

“Emerson!”

Alex’s stomach clenches and her ears start to ring. The shame is a physical thing. It feels like slime spattered on her cheeks.

“Sir!”

So it goes, down the alphabet. It’s agony, listening to all these men who beat her.

“Able company, fall out!”

“Whiskey company, step forward!”

“Move, woman!” Vasquez growls.

Alex completely forgot that she, Megan and Susan were assigned to Whiskey company. Probably just in case someone needed a hint that it was an all-woman barracks. The base seemed to have a lot of trouble adjusting to women being present. Most of the time, Alex felt sorry for them. Much of it was just an extreme lack of planning.

“Danvers!”

“Sir, yes sir!”

“Vasquez!”

“Sir, yes sir!”

Megan Johansen is standing between them, seething. Six months of jokes and snippy comments and hair critiques and workout ‘tips’ from Megan vanish the instant her name is passed over. The buzz is instant and Alex can feel it in her _toes._

“Some real congratulations are in order, ladies. You apparently have bigger balls than any of these morons,” the colonel grumbles, pointing to the men left standing.

He offers his hand to Alex and she takes it.

“What you did, stepping forward for this, took courage. You two just made US Army history. Ladies, welcome to the 75th Ranger Regiment.”

“Thank you, sir.”

A small crowd of off-duty personnel has gathered. They salute Alex and Susan.

“Whiskey company, fall out!”

Someone hands the colonel another sheet of paper.

“Danvers, grab your gear and report to building forty-eight.”

Alex sprints to her bunk and starts packing, shoving the trinkets she brought from home into the inside webbing, grabbing fatigues and toiletries at random and finally slamming the locker shut.

[Echo, contact mom and Kara. Tell them I passed.]

[Right away. Also, I told you so.]

Building forty-eight turns out to be a shoebox-sized prefab just inside the perimeter with a desk, a filing cabinet and three folding chairs. Someone threw it together in a hurry. It cwould pass for an office as long as no one got too close. The sentry locks the door behind her. Behind the desk is a blonde woman in a gray pinstriped suit and an indigo silk blouse. Her hair is pulled into a tight bun and her eyes lock on and track Alex from the door.

It feels like being studied with a microscope. It takes everything Alex has do to keep going closer.

“Danvers, is it? Have a seat.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Pulling a file folder from her desk drawer, the mystery woman slides it across to Alex.

“Do you know what this is?”

_Fuckfuckfuck. This is bad!_

Once when Alex was home sick, Kara showed her a puzzle game on her phone. The prize was $1,000 for anyone who matched the glyphs. It seemed sort of like Galactic Standard but it was way too messy for that, so they chalked it up to chance.

The prize paid off Kara’s first car.

“Online puzzle game,” Alex replies. “looks like a high score for ‘SisterGrimm’?”

“Hmm. You’re not the worst liar I ever met,” the blonde replies, leaning back in her chair. “Hardly the best liar either. We can work on that.”

Alex’ steely-eyed tormentor is unimpressed. She taps the printout again.

“This was placed online three years ago as part of a CIA project. It is written in a language we knew nine words of. There were parts of other words but back then, we don’t know even what a whole word should look like. This is a language we believe hostiles may be using to communicate.”

“I’m curious how you know it. This is a language that does not occur _anywhere_ on Earth except for a piece of wreckage we found fourteen years ago in New Mexico. Dust storm uncovered it from the middle of the White Sands range. This was etched on a piece of plating that survived four hydrogen bombs sitting less than a hundred meters from ground zero.”

Alex whistles. The engineer in her can appreciate that. The alien’s big sister in her worries about how big that ship must have been and how many died when it went down.

“The guys at Langley just about jizzed their pants when you translated the rest. We identified eighty-seven new words and got partials for fifty-one others. If you hadn't already been in ROTC, they would have black-bagged you. Fortunately for me, you were already in _our_ system. My system.”

She reaches across the desk.

“General Shay Mitchell. You work for me now. I run a project out of Joint Special Operations Command, reporting only to the Secretary of Defense. You will remain attached to the 75th but on loan assignment as my attaché. The press will think I’m tutoring the next generation or some shit or some shit like that, which will be your a cover. I’m not wasting fire team leaders on desk jobs.”

“You will be working with whoever I tell you to: SEALs, other Rangers, Delta, NATO members on occasion. Marine Corps after I get some proof they’ve had their rabies shots.”

 _Right. So just drop a greenhorn in with the legends,_ Alex thinks. _The ones they make movies about._

Mitchell pulls out a bottle of scotch and a shot glass.

“Based on your scores, that shouldn’t be an issue.”

On one hand, Alex really should be warning Kara, screaming at her to cut ties, forget Alex’s name and run and never look back. That’s what is best for Kara. On the other hand, here is a flag officer telling Alex she was hand-picked for a job that top operators dream of and never get. Whatever this is, SEAL Team Six only visits it but Alex gets to live there.

If she heard that, Kara would probably want Alex shake this woman’s hand and agree.

 _What would Kara do_ _if she were me_ _?_

“It would be an honor, ma’am.”

“Glad to hear it. Consider this your language test. I assume you were being modest when you were lying and you can actually read it. What does that say?”

“Well, let’s see. It’s a shipping manifest. Some light alloys, prefab shelters, emergency rations, medications and…well, that’s...well.” Alex gulps, forcing the color back out of her cheeks. “Several hundred doses worth of a compound commonly used in the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases for people who are not from Earth.”

Mitchell’s lip curls upward for just a moment before she schools her expression. She throws one back then refills the shot glass.

“You’re serious?”

“Yes. That,” Alex waves her hand at the printout.

“Is written in a trade language. To enable different species to communicate about prices, products, terms and so on. If I had to guess from the quantities compared to the prices they got paid for moving it, this was a private freighter on a relief run when it went down. I can write it all out in English, if you like?”

_I’ll feed her this and she won’t be as curious about the rest._

Mitchell toss a reporter’s notepad across the table and reaches into her desk, pulling out another shot glass and waving it temptingly at Alex.

“Take me a couple minutes. There’s a lot of gross Tamarean slang on here,” Alex mutters. "Which makes sense, given the cargo."

Mitchell raises an eyebrow.

Alex hadn’t realized she said the species out loud until it was too late.

“Fuck!”

“So, what’s a Tamarean? Is it an alien?” Mitchell whispers, leaning close.

“Aliens are an urban legend,” Alex replies.

“Superman claims otherwise.”

“And eighty-two percent of people don’t believe him when he says it. With good reason. He’s the only one we’ve ever seen. I cannot stress this enough but Superman wears his underwear _outside_ his tights. Which is stupid. He is not astrophysicist material, ma’am.”

“True,” Mitchell replies while tracing her finger along the rim of the bottle.

“Well? Is a Tamarean a kind of alien or not?”

“Yes.”

“What do you know about them?”

“Plenty. System of origin, physical capabilities, political factions, alliances with others. Notable persons, including some who may have emigrated here.”

_Who I may need to get a phone number for so I can warn them._

Mitchell waves her shot glass at the paper.

“On the pad, all of it.”

Alex drops the pen back on to the pad.

“No. I cannot do that, ma’am.”

“It was an order, Danvers.”

“I understand that. Revealing that much information would indirectly reveal the _source_ of the information which would place at least three American citizens in danger, one of them a baby girl. If a bad actor gets that and moves on it, innocents die. Innocents who are for lack of a better phrase, ordinary people.”

Mitchell hasn’t torn her head off, so there’s still time for Alex to salvage this.

“And I swore to defend the country and the Constitution. In terms of intel like this I can assure you have a lot more than anyone else you’ll find. Unique connections.”

Alex pauses.

“If I give you everything and it leaks, people die. If I keep it all, no one dies but nothing gets fixed either. Reading you in as quick as we safely can is the best thing.”

The drumming of Mitchell’s fingers on the formica sounds like thunder as they stare each other down. Thirty seconds ago, this could have been her dream career. Now it’s a toss-up whether she ends up discharged and at court-martial or with a bag over her head in Gitmo. Or worse, someone tortures Kara’s name out of her.

“You’re willing to give up a lot to bury that intel. This sounds like it is personal, Danvers.”

“It is. I will die protecting that information, General. If that’s what it takes.”

Mitchell barks out a laugh. For such a high officer, she has almost no filter and a weirdly casual way of talking to subordinates.

“Don’t exactly lack for courage, do you?”

She pours another shot glass and slides this one across to Alex.

“You don’t trust me. I get it. Why would you, at this point? These enemies you mentioned. Humans, I assume? Off the books operations or private security?”

“Mad scientists, biological weapons testing, live dissections, and plain old terrorists. Human supremacists.”

“Well,” Mitchell grouches. “That’s a cheerful mix. I can imagine people wanting to _militarize_ it but… I suppose I should have expected hate groups as well. Fair point.”

“Sort of like the KKK except they hate aliens and black people. At least I would be _surprised_ if they don’t hate black people. I suspect some of these groups – the labs at least – are government sponsored but most are private. The private ones scare me more. Victims who you can claim don’t matter, profit motive as the only guidance and no one in Congress to kill the funding? Bad mix.”

Mitchell acts like this was something she had been wondering about herself.

“Sounds like there’s no love lost between you and them. You’re angry. I can work with that. I just so happen to have no adult supervision and access to the best toys and the meanest bastards we have. No Tamareans, fine. So what can you tell me about the bad guys?”

Alex snatches the pen and starts scribbling down names, addresses, dates...anything her brain can grasp from memories. She’s always tried to keep an eye on those who are looking for Kara and Echo gives her an inroad on all but the tightest computer networks.

“I can give us a running start, maybe hit some secondary targets. If we keep the ball rolling and climb the food chain, it might be enough to get every last one of them killed.”

Mitchell slaps her palms on the desk, a nasty grin across her face. Alex sees a silver mass hanging on her right side in what looks like a carbon-fiber holster.

“I’ll take that deal. All your shit is outside?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mitchell walks over to the door and bangs on it. The instant the sentry opens it, she claps her hand over his mouth, pulls her weapon fires into his torso. Raw voltage dances across his body armor and he hits the deck, convulsing and twitching. Her suit jacket seems to dissipate the charge that reaches her. Mitchell brushes her hair out of her eyes.

“Whew! Nothing personal, soldier. When he wakes up it’s going to feel like the morning after three-day bender. He’s not going to remember this.”

“Is that a ray gun, ma’am?”

“Real beauty, isn’t it?”

She flourishes the silvery weapon, all curves and sleek lines. Mitchell balances it on one finger before twirling it like a Wild West gunslinger and dropping it back into her holster.

“Close-range sidearm. Royally fucks up the nervous system of anything smaller than an elephant. No more lethal than a taser. Unless you turn it up. Standard issue. If you’re in.”

“Hell yes, I’m in.”

The one thing Kara _never_ let her do was play with ray guns.

“Grab my purse, will you? Thermite grenade in the inside pocket. Splash the scotch around and leave the grenade on the desk.”

Alex drags the sentry outside and sets the timer. Across the yard, a spotless Blackhawk with one-way glass and no running lights is touching down. Not the standard Army paint job.

“Last chance, Danvers!” Mitchell yells. “Down the rabbit hole or not?”

Alex pauses. Kara needs to know something’s up and Eliza deserves to know why her daughter dropped off the face of the Earth.

[Echo, tell mom and Kara I got a really cool assignment but I’ll be off the grid. Tell them not to worry. Quietly.]

[Sending text only, using the entangled particles.]

“Got your six, ma’am.”

Mitchell bangs her hand on the door and it slides open. A much larger version of the gun Mitchell used is tucked inside the door on a hydraulic mount and a pair of tactical vests sit on the front bench, crisscrossed with what look like hydraulic pistons. Some sort of fiber bodysuit is folded beside each along with a dozen more pistons and canisters. To Alex, it looks like a partially assembled exoskeleton. Body armor which the eggheads supposedly needed ten years to finish and field-test.

One vest is marked ‘Danvers, A.’ and one ‘Vasquez, S.’ A female soldier is on the other bench with a bag over her head. Her wrists are zip-tied and her knee is bouncing.

“Long time no see, Vasquez,” Alex snarks. “Speak freely, Private.”

It’s always best to start with that. It gives Vasquez more flexibility which is helpful for a woman with zero chill and not much of a filter. It also gives Alex access to brilliant tactical instincts along with Susan’s truly frightening aggression.

“Hiya, Danvers. What are you in for?”

“Crossword puzzle.”

“Assaulting a superior officer, though in my defense he was _not_ in uniform.”

Mitchell looks from Alex to Vasquez and back again. Vasquez should have been ma’am-ing and sergeant-ing and saluting to Alex left and right.

“You know each other, then?”

Susan nods through the bag on her head. Mitchell leans over from her bench.

“She dropped on my best man while he was wearing a jury-rigged disguise. No hesitation, no mercy. She even account for the extra limbs. Mostly. Nine blows.”

 _Sounds like Susan,_ Alex thinks. _Give her something no one has ever punched before and some brass knuckles and she’s in heaven._

“Costume?” Vasquez sputters. “I nearly broke my wrist. How was I supposed to know it wasn’t just a big-ass bug?”

Mitchell puts her head in her hands.

“You weren’t, Private. You were supposed to react naturally to a hostile alien of unknown type. That was the whole point.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIVIA:  
> In recent Supergirl comics, "Cameron Chase" (remember her from Chapter 2?) replaces Director Bones at the DEO. Shay Mitchell and Cameron Chase are canonically a couple in some storylines. I just swapped DEO for FBI and decided that Alex needed a gay commanding officer slash mentor.


	5. The Black Knight Always Triumphs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON CRASHING TO EARTH:  
> Where the guy in the chair is Winn, the Black Knight is anointed and the bros of Sigma Phi are brought to heel, Kara is chivalrous, Kara can now detect flirting on the second try and Kara has strong top energy.
> 
> NEXT EXCITING EPISODE:  
> Where only Batman takes his conspiracy theories seriously, Batgirl and Kara re-enact Wonder Woman's discovery of ice cream, Kara has a roof buddy, Alfred is the beating heart of the Bat Family, Kate Kane delegates some work to avoid an awkward morning-after, Kara learns about a food allergy, Winn asks the hard questions and the Adorkable Crime-fighting Duo of Room 713 learn the horrifying truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> STYLE GUIDE:  
> Italics in quotes (i.e. out loud) is foreign languages.  
> Italics are thoughts/observations.  
> Brackets [ ] are interactions with artificial intelligences and cybernetics.  
>  **Bold** and block-quoted passages are recorded messages, songs or poems.  
> A fully blank line between paragraphs means passage of time with the same character or unconsciousness.  
>   
> 

* * *

**November 8th, 2005 | Kara Danvers**

National City University

Sigma Phi Fraternity house

 

Kara whips around the dance floor, scanning the room as she spins and hoping her size will keep the boys at arm’s length. As far as these people know she’s a pretty girl in a yellow sundress with a clutch and a bluetooth headset. The bluetooth links to Winn, Kolex and her newest robot offspring--Kleenex--and the clutch contains a roll of nanotube-weave fabric that can deflect a meteor strike from whoever she wraps in it.

On Kara, practical still looks good.

Winn helped her make a ‘friendship’bracelet' that can hold a dozen micro-drones which will buzz room to room after she deploys them. Nothing will happen here that Kleenex cannot see. Letting him handle the monitoring makes it feel much less voyeuristic.

“Whole place smells like Coors Lite,” she complains. “Not so sure my liver can handle the fumes.”

[Lady Kara, there are only three compounds on this planet that could harm you if ingested. Large enough stockpiles do not yet exist.]

"Kolex the joke-killer strikes again,” she sighs.

“Where’s the punchbowl, Winn?”

“Ten meters off your three o’clock. Stairway. Next to the bite-sized brunette.”

Sure enough, a woman with shiny black curls is standing by the punch bowl. The guy in front of her has blocked her by leaning on the wall while they chat. If not for the wall at her back, she would slide right onto the floor.

“I could’ve found the staircase without the brunette, Winn.”

“Sure about that? You’ve been grouchy.”

[Kolex, I want a medical assessment on her. Use all the sensors.]

There’s a pinch in her neck as long-unused devices power up and re-orient.

[No physical injuries. Circulation in the capillaries and posture suggests extreme intoxication. If we get closer, I can estimate blood alcohol levels.]

A red-headed guy with lots of meat on his frame and a lopsided grin reaches for Kara’s waist. He has freckles but they’re only a shade darker than the redness on his cheeks from the booze. Too bad he’s drunk because she certainly wouldn’t throw a teddy bear like him out of the booth if he came up to her at Starbucks.

“You are _gorgeous._ I’m Mike. _”_

“Little old me?” she drawls. “Don’t know about gorgeous but thanks. Problem is,” she says while carefully detaching his hands from his waist before she ruffles his hair. “I’m a big girl and you're way too drunk to dance. I might knock you over.”

“Yeah,” he realizes, trying to shake the fog from his head. “You got a point. Maybe another time.”

“If we’re lucky. Good night, Mike.”

No one else makes a pass as she beelines to the punch. She takes one of the miniature drones off the bracelet Winn made and sets it on the rim of the punch bowl. The camouflage field engages and it rolls in like it were any other ice cube.

She dropped the others at the doorway and the top of the stairs.

Winn whoops in her ear.

“You are the all seeing ruler of Sigma Phi. Defender of maidens! Master of the realm! First of her name!”

_No more Game of Thrones binges for Winn._

“Two hundred eighty-ninth, I think.”

She stops to think. _Erok-El_ _and_ _Shalaur-Zod…_ _Palar El-Zod and Kolo-Zenn…_

“No, two hundred and eighty-fifth in my father’s house. My mothers house did a better job of continuity of leadership. There I am only the ninety-first.”

Winn sputters. He really needs to quit chugging Diet Coke when he’s backing her up.

“So you _are_ a space princess! I knew it!”

Kara rolls her eyes even though she knows that Winn can’t see it.

“Check the feeds for the drone swarm and route all the data to Kleenex for monitoring.”

“You built another, somehow even more amazing robot and you are calling it _that_?”

“It’s not better than Kolex. Just more specialized for security monitoring and patrol work. I called it that because it monitors horny men. It was either that, Penthouse or Hand Lotion.”

“Fine! Fine! Not going to push this. Won’t give you any more ideas.”

_Now to get out of here and take_ _four hours of hot_ _showers._

She is almost to the door when she hears it. The other voices fade away into a dull buzz as she focuses on the conversation by the punch bowl.

“I think I need to go home and crash, Bob.”

“It’s Jack. Don’t worry. You can crash upstairs.”

“Beat me with a mangy _talaq_ ,” Kara groans. “Winn, is that the brunette?”

“It is. Miss Sultry and Wobbly is trying to leave and Spray Tan there doesn’t seem to want to let her.”

Kara turns around. Trying to stay to the edge of the dance floor isn’t fully successful. One girl bumps into her while she’s busy puking in a trash can and one of the upperclassmen of Sigma Phi tries to intercept her.

“You all right?”

His eyes sweeps Kara head to toe but he doesn’t linger anywhere. He’s checking her _over_ , not checking her _out_. Making sure she’s all right. Poor bastard. His job is to take care of the guests and keep something vaguely resembling order. The problem is that he’s out-numbered, out-muscled and out-horndogged by his brothers.

“Move, dude.”

She checks him with her shoulder and he falls backwards over the couch.

“Whoa! Can I hire you for next time?” he calls after her.

[Kolex, student records hack. I need a name.]

[The inebriated female in the corner?]

[Yes.]

[Stand by. Question for you: can I be Blue Beetle whenever we play this game?]

He’s begging. Kara has spent enough time listening to tell.

Kara laughs.

“Sounds good, old friend.”

[Corrine Elizabeth Alberts. Business and Marketing. GPA and class schedule?]

“Corrine!” Kara calls, jumping up and waving. “You did come!”

Glassy brown eyes turn to Kara. Even swimming in shitty booze, those are eyes Kara could fall in to and drown. Her brow furrows, creating a positively lickable crease.

_Please be straight, please be straight, please be straight,_ Kara wishes.

“Yeah,” she slurs. “I came. This is Jack. He’s kinda cute. Maybe. See, we were drinking. We maybe also had a couple drinks.”

“Great!”

Kara grabs the plastic cup from her and downs it in one go. She tosses the cup and Jack and it bounces off his head.

_Free throw, two points._

“That’s fucking awful, dude. What is that? Grain alcohol, canned orange juice and monkey jizz?”

[No primate genetic material, Lady Kara. No illegal pharmaceuticals. However, it was approximately one hundred and sixty proof. Her blood alcohol is at least point one nine nine. Given her small and easily-handled body, that is dangerous for her health.]

[Listen to me, Blue Beetle. There will be no wing-roboting, no matchmaking. Not now. This is serious. She isn’t safe.]

“All right,” Kara sighs, putting her arm under Corrine. She’s too drunk to cooperate at all. It’s like carrying a cocktail dress full of silly putty.

“Back to the dorm, you hot mess you. Going to douse you in Gatorade and sprinkle some aspirin in your mouth.”

Jack puts his other arm out, blocking Kara off.

“She’s my date, not yours. You wanna dyke out? Try the art building,” he growls. “Or just go out and find some bangers.”

_Jack had to get racial? I was going to let him off for the dyke bit, too._

Winn must have taken the whole Snickers bar down the wrong tube, judging by the sputtering in her earpiece. Kara’s arm tightens around Corrine.

An anticipatory hiss travels around the mostly-white room and a huge guy with a shaved head and a leggy companion twirls his date around and tucks his chin on her shoulder. They both shoot Kara a look that says asks if she’s going to take that lying down. Better than she dishes out than a human. Worst case for Kara is some cop empties his gun into her, only to find out he’s wasting the city’s money. Kara has fisted her right hand so tight she can feel her nails despite her unbreakable skin.

“Easy, Kara.”

“Winn, I love you. You’re like my kooky uncle. But you don’t get to tell me what have to put up with. Especially not about this.”

“Right. Sorry.”

Kara turns her attention back to Jack who squares himself and crosses his arms.

“Fine. Sake of argument, she’s your date. So if I were to ask you to both tell me her last name on the count of three, that’d be no trouble.”

The chaperon from before is four paces away with his cell phone in his hand, knuckles white around the glass.

“One. Two. Three.”

“Smith!” Jack shouts.

“Err,” Corrine mumbles. She really _is_ trashed. “Alberts.”

“Smith? Dude? Really? Works the best statistically, I suppose.” Kara tilts her head at Corrine. “The lady wins. Move along.”

Nothing.

“I said move. Move...your...hand.”

Winn is in her ear again.

“Please, please, please remember that it is wrong to kill people, Kara.”

Kara reaches up to her ear and mutes her headset.

While hunched over to carry Corrine, she can’t look Jack in the eye. What she can do is kick off her shoes and push her fist into his chest.

“Jack, you’re going to back off. I’m going to walk away. Your standards president over there is going to walk you upstairs and lock you in while you sober up.”

“Or what?”

Kara sucker punches him. While he’s coughing, she strikes his shoulder and drives her knee into his groin. She pushes up with her knee while tightening her grip around his collarbone and pressing down. He screams in pain but doesn’t hit the floor. In a squeeze like this, he’s not going anywhere.

She looks down at Jack’s contorted face and smirks.

“Or this. This is where I keep squeezing from both sides and I’m either going break some bones or do nasty soft-tissue damage to your dick. Maybe both. I hear that broken bones heal better.”

“Crazy bull dyke ni-”

That time, it was Corrine. Corrine swung a forty of whiskey into his head and she did it like a boss. Kara see that the bottle is mostly full. He slides out of Kara’s grip and crashes into a beer pong table.

She is staring at Corrine and is just as floored as everyone else.

“Damn, Corrine. I feel safer.”

“I hurt my hand,” Corrine whines.

“Just a sprain, I bet. We’ll get it checked. Cover your ears, Corrine.”

It’s sad but adorable, the way she struggles to find both her ears at the same time. The standards president gapes at Kara, shaking his head no with his hands folded as if I prayer. She waves her Bluetooth around.

“Listen up, you assholes! I’m going to call campus police about an attempted rape. Oh, and that line of ecstasy on the mirror over there. Which means they’re going to rip this place apart for drugs. I swear to God, if this place is not fucking spotless and if there is any girl upstairs who isn’t sober as a judge...you will regret it. I will find a way to ruin you.”

She taps the earpiece.

“Siri, call anonymous tip line.”

A peal of evil-villain laughter answers before Winn turns the microphone at his end back on and uses the voice program he wrote so that he sounds like Siri.

 

After leaving her tip, Kara hoists Corrine and starts towards the front door.

“Hey!” a woman shouts. “You’re a hero! Who are you?”

Chants of “Hero name, hero name, hero name!” fill the room.

_Rao’s shadow. Do I need a superhero name now?_

“Uh, Batgirl?” Kara mumbles. “No. That’s taken. Fratgirl? Way too specific.”

“Black Knight,” Winn suggests. “Solid vigilante ring to it, works with your face for undercover work or with like, black pajamas and a ski mask on patrol.”

“Thanks. I’ll take it,” she whispers back. “You get dibs on a suit if I ever make one.”

“Ooh, it would work even better with a suit.”

“No boob armor, Winn.”

“I was thinking something _sexier_ , something more _you_. Plate armor and giant sword. Accessorize with a shield and winged eyeshadow.”

The visual gives her the boost she needed. She looks over her shoulder towards the dance floor.

“I am the Black Knight! I will be watching.”

 

After snagging her backpack from the bushes and changing, Kara feels like herself. Maybe even like a hero. The denim jacket smells like the woods outside Midvale, which brings back a thousand hugs from Eliza. The cargo jeans are hardly fetching but they do give her space for three cans of mace, sixteen zip-ties, four actual sets of handcuffs and a cheap plastic ‘taser’. She and Kolex hacked it together based on the power transfer coils for the weaponry on a _Flamebird-_ class frigate.

As long as she keeps it on zero, no one will be the wiser.

The hand-me-down combat boots from Alex are what makes her feel _righteous._

Corrine’s dorm room is on the sixth floor and the elevator is out. Kara stops twice to let her puke into a trash can. Without her student ID number and Kolex’s crack of the housing administration database, they would really be in trouble.

Kara brings her hand up and raps three times. The door dents slightly and the whiteboard falls off, cracking on the floor.

“Crap,” Kara mutters. She didn’t think she’d be so buzzed from dealing with Jack.

The door opens a sliver. It’s dark inside but Kara can make out eyes and some kind of mud-based face masque.

“This one yours?” Kara jokes. ”Found her sliding off the wall at Sigma Phi.”

“That’s mine, yeah. Need help getting her in?”

“Just need the door opened.”

The door swings open and Corrine’s roommate reaches out to help.

“Top bunk?”

“Yeah. Need a hand?”

Kara hoists Corrine up and slides her onto the mattress before pulling the sheet up to her chin.

“Right. Never mind that, yeah, you’re good.”

_Was that a whistle?_

“Jesus,” the roommate whispers.

Kara taps her ear piece.

“Winn, sign off.”

The creak of his desk chair can be heard, along with a frantic tapping of keys.

“Uh, right. Signing off. You kids have fun!”

_Jackass._

Kara turns around and gets her first good look. The light over the study desk casts a dim pool of yellow light on to some papers and a laptop. Corrine’s roommate is leaning on the desk. She’s deliciously plump with a razor-sharp cheekbones and short dreadlocks. In the shine of the lamp, her hand looks like polished mahogany. She looks Kara up and down, then does it again. Then she locks eyes with Kara and just stares. Waiting for Kara to look away.

“What's a Winn?"

"A friend of mine. He likes me to stay on the phone when I’m out at night. Buddy system, what can you do? I’m Kara. Sorry to interrupt.”

“I’m Nadia. And you didn’t. Anyone who feels like playing gentlewoman for my trashed room-mate can stop by.”

Something about the way Nadia smirks makes Kara’s brain flash back to Emilia’s hips swaying as they walked the beach in Midvale in the middle of the night.

_Bad Kara!_ She scolds herself. _Humans are not_ _safe with_ _you!_

The problem is that part of her brain that sets rules for using her powers is no longer in charge. What is in charge is the part of her brain that makes her shiver whenever Nadia looks at her.

“This happen a lot?”

“Corrine getting trashed? Or gentlewomen coming in my room?” Nadia teases.

Nadia’s voice is lower than it was before and Kara thinks maybe she got closer. Unless the room got smaller. Her mud masque smells really good. It smells like lavender.

“Either? Both?”

“Connie gets trashed on the reg but most people wouldn’t rescue some random chick from a frat party. You’re one of the good ones, Kara.”

“Thanks!”

Nadia smooths out her bathrobe.

“You single?” she asks.

“Sorry, what?”

_She is hitting on me! Play it cool,_ Kara reminds herself. _Act cute._ _No rambling._

“Are you single, Kara? Is there someone waiting to _appreciate_ all of _that,”_ Nadia asks, drawing an hourglass with her fingers. “when you get home?”

“I’m single.”

Nadia rolls her eyes.

“Christ. How dumb is your roommate, anyway? She should have gone in for that freshman lesbian experimentation the instant she saw you.”

“It’s a guy. He’s pretty smart. Just that he’s gayer than he is smart.”

“Ah, the mysterious ‘Winn’ I suppose.”

“Bingo,” Kara replies.

“So, he won’t mind?”

Kara shakes her head. Nadia steps closer.

“That’s good. Because I’d really like to kiss you.”

Everything smells like lavender now and Nadia’s hands are fisted tight in her jacket and Kara can’t really come up with an excuse. She could scoop Nadia up and curl all the way around her if she wanted to. Grab her, hold her close and just _be_ for a while. No legacy, no fear of dissection tables, no pressure. Just a woman in her arms.

“This isn’t just because of Corrine? You don’t have to thank me.”

“No talking about Corrine,” Nadia purrs, putting a finger to Kara’s lips. “please. This isn’t about her.”

“Would you like to kiss me, Kara?”

Nadia puts a finger on Kara’s chin, lifting to expose Kara’s throat.

“Yes,” she manages, swallowing a lump in her throat.

“Good,” Nadia replies, lashing Kara’s collarbone with her tongue.

Kara seizes Nadia, grabbing her ass and lifting her off the floor. Nadia gasps.

“Gotcha, fun-size!”

“All right, I’ll admit. I was not expecting that."

Her hands slither under Kara’s jacket and nails dig into her biceps. A delicious moan from Nadia has Kara tightening her grip and frantically tugging at the sash on the bathrobe. She finally finds it and yanks. It’s too dark to see much but Kara sees sweat-kissed skin and she runs her palms over plump breasts and stiff nipples. Her hands glide downward, finding prickling tufts of hair and slippery skin.

Nadia puts her feet on Kara’s boots and goes on tiptoe, sucking on Kara’s jugular.

“You’re still wearing clothes, Kara. I don’t like it.”

“Tonight is all about you.”

Kara’s finger slips in without her even meaning to. _Did I hurt her?_ Nadia stares up, her pupils blown and lips puffy. Her mud masque has started to run.

“Fuck,” Nadia hisses. “I need it, need you. Don’t care how.”

One step forward pins Nadia up against the wall, her legs clamped around Kara’s hips and Kara’s hand spanning the back her neck. It starts slow. Nadia bears down hard on the fingers teasing and circling inside her while Kara pushes with her hips, keeping a distance. She wraps her arms around Kara‘s neck. Each flick of the fingers and grind of the hips peels away another layer until Nadia’s breathing is reduced to shudders and gasps.

Kara stills her hand and she starts nipping at Nadia’s face anywhere she can. Chin, jaw, earlobe, cheekbone. All are delicious.

“Let me come!” Nadia snarls.

Kara laughs at seeing the feral gleam in her lover’s eyes. Cupping Nadia’s mound in her palm, she squeezes with her palm and resumes her thrusts with gusto. She feels teeth clamped hard on her shoulder and Nadia’s breath tickling her neck.

Nadia’s head falls back when she goes over the edge.

“Kara!”

“Shh,” Kara whispers. “Breathe. Enjoy it.”

It takes ages for Nadia to ease off. Kara threads her clean hand into perfumed dreadlocks and rubs the scalp underneath, slowly circling.

“That...was...amazing,” Nadia pants. ”but I don’t have anything left. Sorry.”

Kara pulls Nadia as close as she can, breathing deep and filling her lungs with the scent.

“You should be tired. That’s sort of the point,” Kara whispers, kissing her forehead.

The question is all over Nadia’s face: _what about you?_

“I...” Kara sighs. “Receiving is harder. It’s fun but I worry I’m going to hurt you.”

“Huh. I guess it makes sense. You’re literally twice the woman,” she teases, tracing a muscle on Kara’s shoulder with her tongue. She grabs and squeezes and tickles all across Kara’s back and abs. “Scratch that. I think I could fit all _three_ of my high school crushes in here. God, woman. What did they feed you?”

“You’re still going to have to take your clothes off,” she whispers. “to sleep with me. I’d like you to. I want you to stay.”

“My life is so awful,” Kara moans. “A beautiful woman wants me to sleep naked in her bed. Woe! Alas! I die! Exit, stage left!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I didn't get to go down on you. Life isn't fair."

Nadia glances at the bunk bed.

“No way I can cram you in that with me. I’m going to go grab the sheets.”

Kara shucks her jacket off while Nadia fusses with the bedsheets. This is much harder than it should be since she has to look at Nadia bent over the bed, her heart-shaped ass upraised and juices shining on her thighs. The temptation to lean forward and take a quick slurp is very real. Miraculously, Kara manages to focus long enough get her belt off and throws her pants into the corner. They clatter and clink with all the various gear in the pockets. Nadia spins around at the noise.

“It's, uh, safety stuff? Like for jogging,” Kara explains.

She slides her boxers off only to get stuck in her T-shirt when it snags in her bra straps.  She might be able to pass off ripping the shirt in half as a non-super-strength feat but she's fairly certain that would have an undesirable effect on Nadia's self control and communication skills.

_The last scion of the House of El, defeated by underwear!_

“Nadia? Little help?”

Nadia doesn't answer, so Kara cheats, using her senses to peek through the cotton. She hadn’t been doing this because she wanted to see Nadia in natural light, not in infrared and ultraviolet and electromagnetism and a thousand other things Kara could see. That would be a beauty she might relish could but never describe properly. Nadia reaches out with trembling fingers to help pull the shirt off, after which she seems unable to get her eyes all the way up to Kara’s face. Kara lays the sheet down and crooks a finger. Nadia wastes no time snuggling into the crook of her neck and laying her legs over Kara’s torso.

“You’re really warm. It’s like cuddling a mug of hot chocolate," she murmurs, resting her cheek on Kara's abs.

Nadia lifts herself up. It takes Kara a moment to realize that she thought anyone would ever be offended by the word chocolate--she really needs to get to know Kara!--or double meanings.

_She sees my skin and_ _I see hers and we think_ _something completely different. She has baggage I don’t_ _understand_ _,_ Kara reminds herself. _I'll never really fake it._

Ever since Alex introduced her to the only black family in Midvale -- the Williams – to help her learn to navigate that part of herself, Kara has hated it. Hated the way she has to avoid and make herself small and cooperative. Shrink herself. She hated that part of her disguise more than anything else but Eliza insisted. She needed to fit in culturally and act as though she understood it.

“The band or the drink? Kidding! You’re fine, Nads. I know what you meant. Partial to hot chocolate myself.”

“Nads? Really? Like one hour anniversary so it’s pet names.”

“If I sleep with a girl, we do pet names. There are rules, Nads. I look forward to hearing mine. And it’s good that I’m warm,” Kara yawns. “You won’t freeze overnight.”


	6. Superheroines and Ice Cream Cones:  A Grand Tradition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":  
> Where only Batman takes his conspiracy theories seriously, Batgirl and Kara re-enact Wonder Woman's discovery of ice cream, Kara has a roof buddy, Alfred is the beating heart of the Bat Family, Kate Kane delegates some work to avoid an awkward morning-after, Kara learns about a food allergy, Winn asks the hard questions and the Adorkable Crime-fighting Duo of Room 713 learn the horrifying truth.
> 
> NEXT EXCITING EPISODE:  
> Where a grocery run goes bad, a worried hookup contacts Kara who turns out to be a better ex than a girlfriend, a training montage, Winn needs some cash, we watch Kara not give a shit about Wall Street, green eyes dazzle even through one-way glass, one-percenter family drama can kill, and Alex is employee of the month when she drops some expertise bombs on her boss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> STYLE GUIDE:  
> Italics in quotes (i.e. out loud) is foreign languages.  
> Italics are thoughts/observations.  
> Brackets [ ] are interactions with artificial intelligences and cybernetics.  
> Bold and block-quoted passages are recorded messages, songs or poems.  
> A fully blank line between paragraphs means passage of time with the same character or unconsciousness.

* * *

 

 **December 8** **th** **, 20** **05** **| Barbara Gordon (“Batgirl”)**

National City University

Sheridan Hall Clocktower

 

Crouched on the clocktower, Batgirl scans the darkened quad. The new night-vision gear is great. The contrast is good and the software can actually replicate the image in color. This mean she’s already seen five things she cannot unsee for the rest of her life.

“Would rather have _not_ known your face tattoo was puke green, kid.”

This mission is off. It feels like she’s being pranked either by Bruce or by Kate. None of them like it when a new vigilante pops out of the woodwork. Sending someone to check is just procedure. What’s worrisome is that Bruce and Kate were _both_ there to give her the assignment and Kate looked embarrassed. One thing Barbara has learned as Batgirl is that Kate Kane the billionaire socialite, distilled badass, out lesbian and closeted vampire--the paleness is a getting to be a bit much--does not embarrass easily.

She certainly does not _blush_ as red as her hair because of some rookie cape, breakup or no breakup. Something else is at work here.

All the team knows is that the vigilante is female, between five eight and six foot three and _powerful_. Despite using what looks like store-bought gear she’s managed to take out four armed muggers at once. According to a giddy article in the student paper, the combined weight was seven hundred eighty-one pounds and she hung them by their ankles from the same lamp-post. The campus ended up replacing the bent-up pole the next week.

For her part, Barbara is more worried about the pattern involved _._ It’s been months and all of her work was stopping crime on or near campus, exclusively violent crimes and mostly crimes against women. Two gas stations got robbed by men who turned out to be armed with a fork and a troll doll, respectively. One bank got hit by a guy bluffing his way in with wires stuck into a hardback novel. No sightings of this “Black Knight” for thefts.

If a girl gets in a tiff with her ex-boyfriend and his cronies, five men end up in the hospital, two of them with broken legs. Drunk husband shows up at a domestic violence shelter and the police find him chained to the front of a garbage truck, bruised from the waist up. It’s a miracle that there has been only one concussion so far.

This cape does not stop property crimes and protects women more often than men. This could be a problem if it becomes a revenge fantasy or once the media gets it.

Bruce is convinced she has powers and aims at carving out a turf and earning goodwill before the reveal and subsequent crime spree. He's usually right about Gotham’s supervillians but that’s a truly lousy rule of thumb for anything else. No man that paranoid, however functional, is a fount of wisdom.

He sent her with a sliver of Kryptonite so she could ‘see if it works’ on Black Knight. It’s worth the risk, he insisted. Nearly five years and Bruce still lives in fear of the radar screen on the Lighthouse the day he fell asleep on the job.

If it does work, she kills a fairly harmless cape who was a non-hostile alien. If it does nothing or if she misses, either a pissed off Kryptonian will turn her into paste or a pissed off woman twice her size will turn her into paste.

Not great options.

“This is probably just a women’s studies major with no hobbies and way too many self-defense classes,” Barbara tells herself.

“Batgirl! Hi! Waffle cone?” someone calls from behind her.

Batgirl spins, swinging to block any possible attack. Instead she feels her gauntlet cracking against the girl’s open-palmed block. Fifty thousand dollars in state-of-the-art body armor shattered like an egg falling onto concrete. How her own hand is intact she has no idea.

Black Knight is standing, scratch that, _floating_ to her left. She’s wearing a nylon running jacket and black cargo pants. She is holding a fat ice cream cone out and happily slurping on her own. Whatever ski mask she wears was pulled up for snacking purposes, revealing dark skin and hot pink lip gloss.

“Well, that was rude. I mean, I did announce myself. Just for that I should eat both of them but I’m not evil. I offer snacks, I deliver snacks. Enjoy!”

“Elysian Creamery’s new flavor. Medusa’s Stony Mint.”

_Bruce is going to love this report. “Powerful metahuman who broke the bat-armor in one swing. Irritatingly perky at four in the morning and brought me ice cream. She seemed nice.”_

_How did she know I like mint chip?_

Hearing that fluffy chatter through a voice scrambler is the weirdest thing Batgirl has ever had to deal with. It’s far more surreal than breaking up the Riddler-Joker-Two Face brawl at Arkham last May.

The difference between her and Bruce is that she will take the ice cream without latex gloves or waiting on a toxicology screen. His idea of acceptable risk is ‘no risk whatsoever’ no matter how trivial the question.

“Nice up here, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Batgirl agrees. “Nice breeze.”

“Really good mint chip, right?”

_Orgasmic. But I’m not going to admit it quite yet._

“Your hand all right?”

She flexes it, curling and uncurling each finger separately.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Good. Just don’t try and beat up your roof buddy next time.”

“My what now?”

“We’re just a couple of girls hanging out on a roof. Having a laugh. Watching for crimes. Hence, we are roof buddies.”

Batgirl snorts.

“Clearly the all-black wardrobe isn’t the source of Bruce’s anger problem.”

“Totally unrelated. Sorry...but who’s Bruce?”

“Fuck!”

Digitally scrambled giggles ring across the quad.

“I already knew. Besides,” she teases, clapping a hand on Batgirl’s shoulder.

It feels like she could put the force of a punch-press behind it but Black Knight is playing nice. Holding back the raw power she clearly has.

“I think people are just at ease around me. Like this lady on the bus who I sat next to just told me all about her divorce. Bawling! Wants me to come to her book club, a total stranger. She let it all out and gave me her card after. I never saw her before in my life. Haven’t seen her since. Really? Can you imagine me in the suburbs at a book club? Find out next Wednesday, I guess. Shoot! I have to remember to buy cheese.”

Black Knight cocks her head to the left like she was listening to something.

“Purse-snatcher. I got to run but I’ll leave you my number. Borrow a pen from that utility belt of yours?”

She whips out a notepad and before Batgirl can react, pulls the Kryptonite stiletto from the sheath on her belt. It slashes right through the notepad and into her hand. The hissing green ore shatters into crumbs.

Black Knight stares blankly at her ruined notepad and torn gloves.

“Crap. That was _definitely_ _not_ a pen! One second.”

She disappears, leaving a mid-air trail of blue lightning. She returns as quick as she came, holding a gel pen and a pad of sticky notes.

“Ran to the book store,” she mumbles, holding the pen cap in her teeth.

It is now quite clear why Kate sent her on this. This kid is funny and badass and has no chill, three qualities that Maggie Sawyer had in spades. Chances are that a heartbroken Kate would have jumped her bones in thirty seconds. Rebound fling is not a good look for the ‘Crimson Angel’ who terrorizes everything in Gotham, no matter how big its balls or lack thereof.

“Toodles!”

She presses the sticky note into Batgirl’s chest plate and disappears, leaving another contrail of electricity. Tapping her earpiece, Batgirl waits for the secure handshake. Which was supposed to be a two-beep tone but has been replaced with Sir Mix-A-Lot. Again.

_Terrific._

Apparently no one can keep Damian in line if she’s not there.

“Alfred, it’s Batgirl.”

“Lovely to hear from you, Miss Gordon. How are the palm trees and the sea breezes treating you?”

Every time she speaks to Alfred, it’s like her dad is still alive. It’s like he is clapping her on the back at softball with her mom in the stands cheering her on. He holds together the sanity of six other kids and even the Dark Knight himself, probably the least well-adjusted of the bunch.

It's easier for her. She had a mom once upon a time and her dad was her rock until he passed. Barbara started this Batgirl thing full time as and adult. Damian and Cass were abused and went straight to being Batbrats with nothing in between.

“Just great,” she replies, unable to stop the smile. “We should catch up when I get back. Right now, could I get a word with the big guy?”

Alfred sighs.

“Master Wayne is in his blanket fort downstairs. One moment.”

She’s not sure how long ago it was when Alfred stopped taking the Batcave, Batcomputer and Batmobile seriously but he clearly gave up on it before she met him.

“What do you need?” Batman growls.

“You do realize the whole scary voice thing is for the _bad guys_ , right? Anyway. I found Black Knight. She’s harmless.”

“I need more than that.”

“She approached me undetected and announced herself standing on my left. I was startled and couldn’t see her except in periphery, so I tried a right hook. She deflected it, which completely cracked the gauntlet but didn’t injure me at all. This something she did bare-handed. Then she handed me an ice cream cone and welcomed me to her city. Left me a contact number.”

“How did she approach?”

“Flying,” Barbara replies.

Bruce Wayne cursing under his breath is one of the sweetest joys in her life.

“Important detail to leave out,” he growls.

“Actually, what I noticed most is that she’s _fast_. I think close to Barry Allen fast. When she flies, it leaves a contrail that looks similar to his. Supersenses are a strong possibility because she is off dealing with some crime I could not hear even with the directional mikes. She’s using a face mask and a voice modulator, which makes sense if she’s a student here. When she lifted her mask for the ice cream, I found out she’s African American.”

“Quite frankly, I applaud her for she is doing everything she can to foil the police. They barely tolerate you and you’re a rich white guy. That would be a bad way to test whether or not she’s bulletproof.”

“Anything else? Did you-”

“Try the dagger?” she interjects.

“I’m sorry, Bruce. There wasn’t a natural place in the flow of conversation to stab her in the back. Since you asked…when she went to write her number, she thought the knife was a pen, pulled it out and accidentally jammed it through the notepad into into her hand. It broke like glass. She flew off to the bookstore to buy a pen and paper, so it clearly did not affect her.”

Bruce lets out a long sigh. One he had been holding for months, apparently.

“So not one of our stray Kryptonians then.”

“Afraid not. Crazy thought! Have we ever just _asked_ Clark what was in the crashed pod? He is your oldest and best friend.”

“Why should I believe his answer?"

It’s moments like this where her opinion of Selina Kyle rises from ‘vodka aunt’ and ‘bad influence on the Batbrats’ all the way to ‘physical manifestation of patience’. Because she loves _that man_ _,_ issues and all. Selina Kyle must be an emotional masochist.

“The flight back is first class, right?”

“It is.”

“Great. Bye now!”

Barbara lets the crunching of her waffle cone drown out his retort.

* * *

 **December** **9** **, 20** **05** **|** **Kara Danvers**

National City University

Honors Dorm, Room 713

 

Kara’s stomach heaves and she empties what little was left into the toilet.

“Easy. I got you, friend,” Winn murmurs, holding her hair and rubbing her back.

She sags onto the tiles. Something is caught in her throat. She slams her fist into her diaphragm. Coughing and hacking, she finally manages to expel it. A chip of glowing green rock the size of her fingernail skitters across the bathroom floor. Kryptonite.

“Should have washed my hands before my bedtime snack,” she grumbles.

With the sun from the window, she feels her strength growing by the second.

“Worst experiment ever,” Kara groans. “But you were right. For some weird reason, Supes and I work differently.”

Winn nods, rubbing his almost-stubble. She would tease him but that is three weeks of careful work on his part. His boyfriend’s orders.

“Maybe, maybe not. Didn’t you say you have missing time from your pod?”

“Sure, why?”

Winn sits down beside her.

“Sake of argument. My little girl is going to a distant planet with an indigenous population of intelligent life which could threaten her now or in the future. I, Winnslow Schott Jr., crazed genius, am an ethically suspect scientist who has created various gizmos and biological weapons that were later banned by the government. I have been censured by the Academy of Argo twice but I keep getting funded. _Who_ is funding me? _Why_ are they funding me? _What_ are they funding?”

Kara doesn’t like where this is going. Not at all.

“What wouldn’t you do to help your little girl survive?” she asks. “Would you trade a lifetime of surgery-themed nightmares for making her much, much harder to kill?”

Winn claps his hands.

“Exactly! I can’t imagine many parents who wouldn’t make that trade,” he admits.

“Kolex? Search my father’s files for any research on creating innate resistance to hard radiation, White Sand exposure or neutron leakage.”

“What’s White Sand?” winn asks.

Kara mouths back ‘explain later’.

Rather than answering through the tattoo, Kolex lets himself in, lowers the lid and lifts Kara up onto the toilet. He steadies her with his upper arms and wipes her forehead with a damp washcloth using the lower pair.

“Stand by. One file found.”

“Can you access it?”

“Yes, a file from the Military Guild’s quarantined archives. Memory downloads from implants, schematics and procedures and project logs. But your father attached a warning. It reads: ‘Kara, my little star, my kind girl. Please leave this be. If you open this, you will uncover secrets better left covered. You will relieve the darkest period of our history. Our worst instincts. Our most shameful atrocities.’ Having read that to you, I can now access the file.

“Hell of a terms and conditions,” Winn mutters.

“Kolex, spool the entire file to our neural link.”

“Done.”

“Kara,” Winn warns. “Think about this!”

“Play it.”

Centuries of memories batter Kara’s brain.

> **Battlefields slick with gore and prison camps stretching to the horizon. Fortresses shattering as monstrous figures pound them with their fists. She sees gloved hands deflect blows, crush limbs and rip organs from living things. Kara sees the faces of the dying as their blood spatters on her skin. She sees warships torn in half by armored figures in suits bearing an insignia written in Kryptonese. Kara feels shrapnel bounce off her skin. A city kneels in fear of a solitary black-armored, black-caped soldier hovering above them. The soldier touches down and beckons to a throne, calling Kara to sit.**
> 
> **Over and over the word ‘Sovereign’ thunders in her ears and that three-sided glyph blazes above it all. A voice speaks to her through what seems to be a liquid-filled glass tube.**
> 
> “ **You are a Destroyer. You are the Fist of Krypton.** **You serve the Empire.** **Awaken.** ”

"Father! No!" she screams.

 

 

Winn is slapping her over and over to wake her up. She started to come to a few seconds ago but watching him very carefully slap her so as not to shatter his hands is funny as hell. Kara really needs a laugh right now.

“I’m up, I’m up. Geez!”

Winn grabs her shoulders and tries to shake her, succeeding only in shaking himself.

“Do not do that! Ever!” He shouts.

“My bestie cannot go bonkers downloading data from mad scientists straight into her brain! You’re my friend,” he sobs. “You can’t die. I won’t let you.”

“Bring it in, Winn. Hug time.”

“Thanks,” he sniffs. “Get your answer?”

“Yeah,” she murmurs. “I’m a war crime.”

Winn cuffs the back of her head.

“Bitch, please. You are not a war crime. Unless you’re breaking someone’s bone at that very moment you’re as criminal a puppy carrying a butterfly on its nose. If it’s to stop a puppy-napping in progress then even the bone breaking is adorable.”

Kara sighs.

“Except for the fact I _am,_ Winn. Me existing is a violation of galactic law.”

Winn offers her a bottle of water from the cabinet.

“It’s story time, isn’t it? I can tell.”

Kara drains the bottle and slouches back onto the tiles. She stares at the ceiling.

“There was a period about forty thousand years back when Krypton expanded rapidly into space. In a matter of decades, thousands of worlds colonized, acquired or simply captured. Our military patrolled two-thirds of the Milky Way and we were making overtures to a crazy-powerful race in Andromeda. The Kryptonian Imperium, they called it. Lasted for several thousand years before collapsing. After that the reforms it was the Republic of Krypton, the democracy that we had when I left.”

“We were unstoppable. The Tamareans, the Martians, the Rakni-Xinda, the Helgramittes, and even the Oans tried to push us back. In one battle, Oa sent tens of thousands of Green Lanterns to sterilize Krypton. All the Lanterns were butchered before they even made atmosphere by a force of a few hundred soldiers.”

“The Thessalians sat it out, became a client state. Started up some resort planets for us, exchanged stress relief for our military for technology and protection. Played to their strengths. The whole sex tourism, retail therapy and economic intermediary approach put them in the best place post-war so they stayed with it.”

Winn takes a long draw of his own water.

“How did you do it? I’m guessing you didn’t master the Force or something.”

“Super-soldiers. On paper, they were Project Sovereign. When deployed their handlers called them Destroyers and they were the backbone of our power. Our enemies called them Worldkillers because that is what they did.”

“Analytical, emotionless, never hesitated to kill. They could move and fight in deep space buck naked if they had to. Just one of them could conquer and enforce Kryptonian Imperium law on a planet like Earth. No question.”

“If Supes went up against one – an amateur versus trained soldier with the enhancements – it would be like a poodle taking on a pit bull.  Yes, both are technically dogs and yes, the poodle is brave as hell but that's only going to end one way.”

Winn shivers.

“These were robots?” he asks. “Cyborgs?”

She shakes her head.

“More like mass-produced Frankensteins. The baseline was Kryptonians hybridized with aliens and completely synthetic species created from scratch for the project. Implanted symbiont gave them entirely new abilities and increased durability by splitting off duplicate organs and bones. Vastly increased the energy intake and output of the skin. Stabilized the quantum offloading in the muscles and increased its capacity exponentially,” she adds, ticking off the changes on her fingers.

“Dermal armor enriched with exotic particles. Regions in the brain surgically stimulated to enable them to visually comprehend faster-than-light and stay oriented in zero gravity. Weaponized immune systems that modified attacking pathogens. If it made them more powerful or quicker-healing, or faster or meaner, we did it.”

“We grew them to adult size and implanted whole libraries of tactics into their brains. Break glass for a weapon of mass destruction with feet. There are stories of _ _soldiers –__ not ships – flying from the surface of Rao to annihilate enemy fleets in other star systems.”

“Sounds bad. What stopped you?”

Kara shrugs.

“According to the histories, a team of Blue and Purple Lanterns infiltrated Kryptonopolis and Argo City working their way up in the Imperial Citadel. Over time, they worked psychological operations on key government officials.”

“Green Lanterns are enforcers. They take orders via subliminal cues in the rings. They use force of Will to power their rings, though not always their own. That’s the only kind of Lantern you know here on Earth. Blue Lanterns stand for Hope, Purple Lanterns stand for Love. Those corps are small in numbers but they act on their own initiative.”

“They softened the people in charge, made them regret their actions. We gave up colonies, paid reparations and fell into the role of peacekeepers and researchers. Treaties were signed. Worldkillers were banned and all surviving specimens were killed. I remember reading that they marched right into the disintegration chambers without a complaint. I asked my teachers why and they explained they that Worldkillers themselves be killed just as easily as they killed others. Because to them, orders are all life was and those were their orders.”

Winn whistles.

“ _So_ glad that modern Kryptonians are more about denim jackets and wearing Nadia around campus like a scarf.”

Hearing her girlfriend's name draws more of the poison from her thoughts. Kara kisses the top of Winn’s head.

“You’re a good man, Winn.”

“What about all this scares you so much?” Winn asks. “Sounds like it was bad but more of a ‘never forget’ than a ‘smoke rises from Mount Doom’ situation.”

"If I were going to worry about my buddy Kara, I'd be more worried what happened if you got a bit too thirsty. You do remember the looks from Pride March, right?"

He waggles his fingers teasingly in her face and she snaps her teeth.

“I remember _someone_ doing rainbow plaid facepaint on his cheeks.”

“It matched my sweater! You carpet munchers do not get to tease about plaid! It’s like...a rule,” he huffs.

“You’re thinking of flannel, Winn.”

He huffs.

“Greg thought it was okay. He liked it.”

Greg did like it. He really did. That morning after might be the only time she has seen Winn wearing a rumpled shirt and looking a mess.

"I seem to recall several volleyball players and three professors," he continues, talking right through her hand when she clamps it over his mouth.

"It was all over their faces. 'Great and terrible as the dawn! All shall love her, and despair!’ They were this close to kneeling. Nadia was holding her _can of mace,_ Kara."

"If I go back to traumatic memories, will you cut that out?" she begs.

He shrugs. “We can find out.”

“At the end of the memories I saw, there was a Military Guild scientist programming a Worldkiller with trigger words. The poor things were _born_ brainwashed _._ I could tell by the uniform and the lab gear it was ancient tech. But the _voice_ was my father’s. At the very least, he knows the trigger word sequence to give Worldkillers orders. That information was supposed to have been destroyed.”

Kara looks at her hands, surprised not to find them caked with blood.

“Remember anything else?” Winn asks. “Besides the vision.”

“Yeah. When I was in the pod, right before the surgery suite put me under some ships warped in and joined mine. Stealth ships, I guess. Black paint, no view-ports, no curved surfaces. Kryptonian because I recognized the design of the maneuvering thrusters. I was a spaceship nerd as a kid,” she explains.

“That was very uncool back home. Dorky. Like being say, a vinyl collector or a typewriter aficionado would be here.”

“Now I feel judged for at least two reasons,” Winn grumbles.

“I would come in and out of consciousness and they would still be there, two on each side. Like they were guarding me. They were on the small side but they moved quick.”

“I thought Krypton scrapped their starships a while back? That’s why the evacuation was a disaster. Nothing was actually on hand.”

“More like we contracted them out but yes. I came here in a wreck my dad bought from in a museum and it was a mess, picked apart for museum souvenirs. The last six one-person ships we could find. These were spotless. Which means they were waiting somewhere or stored on purpose. They had to be old.”

Kara digs for anything else she can remember.

“No, not just old. Ancient. The sublight drive exhaust was dark blue, not green or white. We haven’t used excitation beams that worked that wavelength for _centuries_ before we stopped making our own which we did _thousands_ of years ago. Better thrust and range but it requires a way more costly type of fuel.”

Kara sucks in a breath.

“The sort of fuel a galaxy-spanning empire could mine, extract and distribute. Any war that big, stuff gets lost, records go missing. Stuff that's supposed to be scrapped isn't.”

“Ghoooooost ships! Wooooo!” Winn teases.

“This isn’t funny. So those ships were Imperium leftovers or maybe illegally retained. Remotely signaled by my dad and sent to my location. Each one was big enough for a cryogenic casket. There could be four more of these monsters out there, besides just me.”

Winn pulls her closer, like Kara was his personal safety blanket.

“Did they come to Earth?”

“Probably. Why else would they follow me across multiple systems? This sucks.”

Winn leaps up, pacing the bathroom and waving his arms. If he wasn’t so well dressed, Kara would really be getting a street preacher vibe off this.

“Kara! We’re looking at this all wrong. Your _dad_ sent these. So they’re not going to hurt _you_. They are here to serve you. You can probably control them if you ever meet one.”

“I don’t want to be a slave owner!” Kara shouts, leaping to her feet. “Remember the day we met? How much the word Daxamite pissed me off’?”

“Daxam was our first colony. Closer than Mars is to Earth. We're practically the same species but I will _never_ answer to Daxamite," she snarls, eyes wild. "They are scum. Even at our _worst,_ our most _vicious_ , we were were free men and women. Daxam still has slavery!”

She takes a step towards Winn, fists clenched.

“The Wordkillers weren’t free,” he reminds her. Kara stops short, feeling like Winn just struck her. “Brainwashed.”

He had put a hand on her chest to stop her getting closer. Which means he’s got his palm all over her left breast, in an accidental and not very skillful grope.

“You really _don’t_ deal with breasts much, do you?” Kara snarks. She lifts her eyebrows and glances down. Winn face goes four shades of red and he lets go.

“Whoops. All I’m saying, Kara, is that these things are here to make Earth _safer_ for _you_. To protect daddy’s little girl. So all we have to do is make them safe for everyone else too. Keep them from going all ‘bow before Queen Kara Zor-El’ on us.”

“Winn, I don’t think… I appreciate the thought but It’s not that simple. I don’t even know how to find them!” she rambles. “I...I...I… This is a really bad idea!”

Winn folds his arms and waits her out.

“I’m right about this, Kara. We can do it. So. Do you remember those code words?”

“Winn!”

He ducks the empty water bottle and heads back to his computer to let her cool off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIVIA:  
> Wonder Woman understands the need for compensation of bystanders for property damage. As Diana Prince she has a non-profit relief organization "Hestia's Mercy" which is funded by charitable donations and tax-deductible sales of various products from home. Their most successful venture is Elysian Creamery, an ice-cream, frozen yogurt and coffee chain with 4,000 locations in Man's World alone. That's where Kara and Winn were when they called Alex.
> 
> Kara is having "Spartan Strawberry"  
> Barbara is having "Medusa's Stony Mint"


	7. Errands, Workouts and Student Teacher Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":  
> Where a grocery run goes bad, a worried hookup contacts Kara who turns out to be a better ex than a girlfriend, we get a training montage, Winn needs some cash, we watch Kara not give a shit about Wall Street, green eyes dazzle even through one-way glass, one-percenter family drama can kill, and Alex is employee of the month when she drops some expertise bombs on her boss.
> 
> NEXT EXCITING EPISODE:  
> Where Kara and Nadia take Winn to brunch with Alex, a wild Vasquez appears with her better half, Emilia's new baes need help from the Black Knight, Kara calls in a favor from the Bat-family, Lena knows that the keyboard is mightier than the scalpel, Emilia plays for time, Lillian is the worst and Lex doesn't see it, Kara shops and drives while black, Nadia gets spooked and someone makes her cry and the Black Knight has a message for National City.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> STYLE GUIDE:  
> Italics in quotes (i.e. out loud) is foreign languages.  
> Italics are thoughts/observations.  
> Brackets [ ] are interactions with artificial intelligences and cybernetics.  
> Bold and block-quoted passages are recorded messages, songs or poems.  
> A fully blank line between paragraphs means passage of time with the same character or unconsciousness.

**March 10, 2006 | Ymala “Emilia” Tyala**

National City

Abandoned School

Too expensive and toxic to demolish and too big to con someone into buying, Marion Crane Junior High sits wrapped in a coffin of plastic and siding. The perfect place for squatters, so long as the squatters aren’t human and can handle asbestos and fumes from the refinery just upwind. Emilia’s “apartment” was once a shop classroom.

She found it on a map of National City when she arrived and asked Kara to help her blast a tunnel into the basement so she could come and go.

 _Kara, I miss you and I hate you and I love you. How is does that happen?_ Emilia took her starved libido out on the town when Kara booted her and ended up discovering a tiny, well hidden colony of off-worlders in the city.

Including a singles bar run by a very flirty Rokklion with an eye for women with badges.

Emilia’s place is never tidy but it is at least _sanitary_. Now it’s a wreck. Three large pizza boxes lie crumpled on the plywood slab she uses as a table, cheese smeared on the floor. There will be mice and cockroaches to vaporize tomorrow.

Clothes and scraps thereof hang from the ceiling fan and the lockers and upturned desks. Kyn and Nakka are twined together on the couch and Tam is between her thighs. It’s rare to find a Coluan with interest in sex, let alone interest in whatever bizarre situation Kyn, Nakka and Tam have invited her to. This happiness and the flashes of jealousy and all this complicated _wanting_ will take some adjusting to but Emilia thinks that maybe she’s finally home.

Kyn and Nakka are lost in sleep with their fingers splayed on each other’s faces. Quite the picture. Kyn’s crystalline flesh flickers with as computations and energy pulses as background processes pass through him. He’s on his back with Nakka’s shiny, lemon-yellow frame draped over him and his limp cock laying along his thigh.

Nakka’s host is napping but her symbionts are not. They convulse all along her back and her legs, fruitlessly trying to draw in genetic material from the coupling they experienced along with her. Genetic material that constructs like Coluans do not have.

When she stuffed her panties in Kyn’s bag and strutted out of the men’s room Emilia was praying someone would notice the mess on her stockings but no one did until they got back to her table. Nakka’s nostrils flared and the game was on. As she explained shortly thereafter in the ladies’ room, Kyn hadn’t left anything for them to see. It was hard to follow along the crash course in Coluan-fucking with Nakka’s fist inside her.

_All the orgasm, none of the cleanup._

The sex was intense. Last night she brought three lovers home and only one still has the energy to deal with her. He may be groggy but Tam is conscious. Neither of them moved after they wore each other out but he doesn’t have joints to sprain and his body is more than big enough to keep her upright and protect her knees Just like when he dozed off, one pair of hands cups her breasts while the other cradles her hip-bones.

“You listened,” she teases.

“Anyone with four arms,” Tam drones, doing a nasal imitation of her voice “will keep two hands on my body at all times.”

“Yeah, pet, I listened.”

Whoever sold him the language training package on landing seems to have collected exclusively trashy samples. He always sounds like an mohawked punk, an agitated and unhinged painter or a spy-movie villain. All that changes is whether he’s speaking English, French or Russian at the time. Nakka’s smoky tones work especially well with Russian.

Her ‘ _dosveydana_ ’ before the goodbye kiss was probably half the reason they did a second date.

Emilia reaches behind her back and Tam _tracks_ her every move. She swallows, drawing in a nervous breath. It feels like being _hunted_ and she loves it. His big, featureless black eyes give no clues except for the angle of his eyelids. His body is green like summer grass, hot and sleek and damp below her. His symbionts wriggle in his chest, slithering past each other with the ridges of their scales stretching his skin and tickling hers. They are hardening and reshaping his muscles in hopes of escaping the grip of her thighs.

The swarm inside him seems far less willing to wait for more than their host is.

“By the Black,” she husks. “I love the way it feels, your body fighting itself. Fighting for me. Now. You...are going to hold very still.”

She pulls the warp-knife from a pocket she had sewed into the back of her bra and charges it with energy. The bra probably a goner. It was tangled around her middle while she was pawed and pressed and stroked by powerful hands and plucked and tickled by immaculately manicured metallic fingers. In their haste last night, Emilia had forgotten to do more than jerk her pants down and lift her shirt before attacking. The scraps of cotton hanging off her now are all that’s left.

She flicks her wrist – hard – and the knife sails past Tam’s head. It skewers an orange in the “kitchen” she tossed together before date night.

Tam grins, showing three rows of teeth. She arches down and takes his fleshy lips in her teeth. His hips jerk upward, his cock twitching. He’s soft now but still in her to the hilt and even soft it’s still fat.

“Where have you been my whole life?” Emilia teases.

“Prime,” he yawns.

“Eating, sleeping, not working. Failing my duty to enhance the gene pool and serve my people. Getting chewed out by my hatch mates. Being exiled with that tart,” he glances at Nakka. “and regretting the fact that nothing there has an ass...”

He squeezes.

“Remotely like yours.”

“What about Nakka? I’d take a bite of that.”

_And I have. And I loved it. And I can’t wait to sink my teeth in her again._

“That’s all slink, love, not bounce. _Slink_.”

“Flatterer.”

Emilia flicks her hand and the knife tilts upward before gliding back to her hand, skimming well above the filthy carpet. Juice slides down the blade, turning into mist as it splashes against the vibrating alloy. She takes the grip and relaxes her focus, draining the maelstrom of force and motion and heat from the weapon back into herself.

“Ta-da! Breakfast?”

“Gladly,” he replies, lifting the orange off the knife with the pad of one long, wide finger. A twinge between her legs reminds her how _good_ that one finger made her feel up against the wall in the hallway.

“I should get some too,” she sighs.

Climbing off Tam and getting to her feet was exactly as irritating as she thought it would be.

She considers going to her bag for her inhibitor but decides against it. Life seethes in her belly, Rakni-Xinda and Thessalian genes battering at each other in hopes that something in the rubble will click. That something will grow. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t but if Emilia is going to be a mother, she could do far worse than this. Her mother seemed to enjoy a raising large, boisterous Rakni-Xinda brood...or three. The baby pictures she left with had to stay in her landing pod. She has helicopter parents with eighteen other children and centuries of ‘big days’ to be proud of. Human data storage devices won’t cut it.

So for the first time in nine centuries, three planets and dozens of lovers, Emilia skips it.

_I should probably call home. She what my mom is up to, see how many new nieces and nephews I have. I’m sure Kolla will want to tell me about each damn one._

“Oh,” Emilia sighs. “Wow. I just need a minute. That was _fun._ ”

“Bouncing on the balls of her feet, she stretches left and right to try to wake her soggy, depleted muscles. It’s no good. She’s spent.

“You,” Tam reminds her, cupping her one big hand around her hip. “Need to take care of yourself. Get some charge in you. You’re not tidy enough to have sanded before we got here...there would be dirty dishes.”

Emilia chews her lip. He’s right. She has not called her dealer in months and her supply ran out two weeks back. She knows what going without feels like – she has more than she cares to admit – and it is not something she should repeat.

“Fine. But just so I can do more singularity tricks during pillow talk.”

“Not complaining,” purrs a very lethargic-looking Nakka.

Nakka lifts her head partway and it turns out her skin bears a faint print of hundreds of tiny cubes. Bedhead from laying on Kyn’s torso all night.

“Morning, sunshine.”

“She’s perky and looks fresh-fucked and,” an ragged growl leaves Nakka’s throat. “smells delicious and I’m too tired to move. I hate it.”

“We’re going decaf, Tam. Fucking her is too much work but I don’t care. I’ll have to go through caffeine withdrawal and clit withdrawal at the same time,” Nakka grumbles. “Once I get my sleep sorted out I can keep up with you better.”

“I’m sure you can, luscious. I do seem to recall you carrying me over here and dropping me on Tam’s lap.”

Somewhere in the other room, her phone rings. Emilia makes a fist, creating a small implosion in the doorway. Her phone flies into the gap where the air used to be along with fast food wrappers and magazines. She leans forward to catch it.

“Why get out of bed?”

She opens the back and switches SIM cards to the one she uses as a burner.

“Let’s see. White Sand dealers in the National City area,” she mumbles, tapping at the keys. “No appointment needed.”

“I’m kidding! There’s only one. And it looks like he sent me a text.”

She whistles and turns the phone to Tam. Tons and tons of refined White Sand in self-contained casks. It must be the complete haul from siphoning a recent crash. She would have to live a very long time to use all of it.

“That is a lot of sand. Why is he selling so much at that price?”

Emilia shrugs.

“You see any starports on this rock? Wrecks don’t need fuel and there’s nothing taking off so...nothing on Earth to burn that in but me. Nakka, be a dear and hand me that roll?”

Nakka looks past Kyn’s arm and sees a roll of bills.

“This one?” she asks, holding up a small coil of hundreds.

“Easy there! No, the tens. I like you guys and I’m thinking I really want to spend forever having all your adorable parasite babies but I’m not spending that much on the second date.”

Nakka grabs the next roll of cash, blurs over and kisses Emilia’s cheek. She scraped her fingers up Emilia’s neck and through the tender spots between the crests and was back in the blankets before Emilia could so much as smile. She sinks back into the blankets and wraps around Kyn with a contented hiss

 _Black preserve me,_ Emilia thinks. _She has no bones. No corners. No hard places._ It gives her ideas. Paper.  She needs paper, pencils and maybe a protractor.

“Come back soon, love. I want to find out about these Human Belgian Waffles,” Nakka reminds her.

Emilia is starting to think Nakka's fondness for breakfast foods is a romantic competitor.

“Just Belgian. They’re all humans so they just call themselves Belgians. It’s one of their smaller nation states.”

“Oh. That makes more sense if there’s no meat. Do you know how to make them?”

Emilia pretends she has to think about it.

“I once made some decent ones over a campfire made of chairs with a deserter from the battle of Waterloo. This,” she gestures at her jury-rigged stove and its propane tank. “Will be _art.”_

###    
  


**March 10, 2006 | Kara Danvers**

Dark Side of “Ganymede”, Jupiter’s Largest Moon

44 light-minutes from Earth

###    


Kara drifts. She just vaporized a comet with a marble-sized lump of iron she brought from home. After the clusterfuck that was her chemical engineering midterm, it felt good. Not her fault that Earth is short so many elements. Her formula would have made an even better plastic.

The vacuum is cold on her skin but even with the faceplate off, it is not painful. The dark is soothing and the silence is bliss. Solar wind dances along her cheeks, leaving a blush of energy and radiation in her skin. Jupiter roils behind her and the sun blazes in the distance, but here...this is calm.

It reminds her of a verse she heard while praying with Emilia in Eliza’s back yard.

_The Black is a womb. The Black is the first womb and the last. Through the Black, fire and ash quickens rock. Rock quickens life. Life quickens our hearts with passion and through this we are given love and beauty and wisdom. We pass away, until only fire and ash remains._

“Winn?” she calls. “I’m ready.”

“Can I say that this is really cool? My bestie is in space, no ship, no suit, no helmet-”

“Two things: I like this shirt so it counts as a suit. And I am keeping a layer of air so I can talk.”

“-she can somehow just _move_ in space like the ships in Star Trek. Her muscles just hand all the excess stress over to a black hole somewhere and say deal with it...she just blew up a comet with the flick of the wrist. Ka-Pow! Breathing is just, like, a fashion choice for her. Have I mentioned that this is cool?”

“Winn! Focus!”

“Sorry. Remember the drill. Three jumps-”

“Shifts, Winn. I’m not jumping. I’m shifting where I am without moving and it’s important that I conceptualize it that way. This is real. When I come out, the bubble snaps _hard. A_ nything I carry with me on the outside explodes in the opposite direction with all force it built up on the way.  I could cook you, California and most of the Pacific if I fly through a radiation storm and drop out within line of sight.”

“Right. The moon as shield, got it. With great power comes great responsibility. Hey! You’re like a comic book superhero!” he teases.

She will never admit that he got her hooked on _X-Men_ and its not her fault that She-Hulk’s swagger reminds her just a smidge of her mom’s way of walking into a courtroom. Then there is the tiny issue of Mystique’s striking resemblance to a Thessalian. Blue scaly woman with at-will disguises? Please! She has some questions for Jack Kirby about where and when he sowed his wild oats. They may share an ex-girlfriend.

Winn taps some keys and mumbles something to himself.

“Four shifts and one stretch in normal space from earth to the moon. Moon, planet, star, moon. Easy cruise to home. Keep the moon between yourself and Earth when you stop. Time to beat: 44 minutes to the sun, 62 minutes round trip to the moon. Fifty one hours, forty-nine minutes for the Moon-to-Earth sprint.”

“Time to beat?”

“Speed of light, woman! Well, that and Apollo 11. Keep up with the class!”

Kara chuckles. “All right, all right, keep your argyle on down there.”

Kolex lays out her path, drawing a thin green line that bends four times: behind Io, around Jupiter, around the Sun and back to Earth just over the crest of the lunar surface. With luck she will have five minutes before Earth-rise.

“You’ve checked the numbers, Winn?”

“You know me.”

[He did an admirable job, Lady Kara. It was amusing to watch him struggle.]

[Kolex, let’s do this.]

“Three, two, one!”

The thunk of Winn’s NERF dart hitting the wall is all she needed to hear.

Astra taught her this, or at least explained the idea. _Think of a thrown knife,_ her aunt’s voice tells her. _You cut past your surroundings, you cut past your fears, your doubts. See yourself as a knife hitting its target. See your target, not your path. See it? Good. Strike, Kara!_

Back then, their lessons only amounted to a half-meter stutter, exploding the swimming pool onto the ceiling and breaking her wrist. Her mother forbade it and her father conspired with Astra to continue the lessons.

_This is for you, Astra._

Kara tilts forward and pushes out, bringing her legs in tight to her chest and reaching her hand out as if to grab Io in her palm. A brilliant flash of white light with blue smears leaves her blinking and rubbing her eyes.

Gaynemede is gone. Io looms before her.

“Kara! Kara! Please be all right!”

“Woohoo!” she hollers. “Winn! I did it. I feel...floaty. But I did it.”

She hears the scratch of the record and he puts on Elton John’s _Rocketman_ because it’s impossible for her to get back there and stop him in time.

“Spread your wings, Kara.”

After three stumbles to clear Io, it starts to click. She skims the storms of Jupiter before angling up out of orbit, trailing her fingertips through the jealous rage of what could have been a star, if only it had more mass. King of Gods, largest the planets and still restless. Fitting that something so big and blustering and yet so failed would be called Jupiter.

Shifting to the sun – no, leaping there, Winn is right – is easy.

Sol is the biggest landmark in the sky. Tendrils of fire millions of degrees above their surroundings lash out at Kara, like some monster who rages at this arrogant creature, this living thing that would touch its body with her bare hands. This invader who belongs to a dead rival instead of among her children.

With all the energy flooding her skin, she should feel great but this hurts. Kara can feel herself twitching, her muscles cramping up.

“Winn?” She calls. “Problem!”

[Any form of radio will be useless here, Lady Kara. Too much interference. Switching to entangled particles.]

The problem with quantum entanglement communication, she soon decides, is that it’s just _crappy_ quality _._

“Kar...ar...” he asks, unintelligible. “Al..righ..up..re?”

[Kolex, can you clear this up somehow? I need his brain.]

[I will try. As for his brain, that is unfortunate. Humans seem very covetous of their skulls and their contents. Uptight.]

[You know what I mean, you clown!]

“Kara! Are you all right?”

Not even close. She hasn’t felt this way in decades. The Kryptonite chip was irritating but this is agony. Her limbs are jerky and she has trouble focusing her attention. Her brain won’t stay focused where she wants it to. This is what Winn acts like when he’s not slept for days and had nine cups before a test.

“No,” she moans. “not okay.”

“Kara? You sound...off,” he replies. It’s not like there’s a word in English for him to use. Spacesick? Sunsick? Warp-drive fever? No good candidates.

“What’s wrong?”

“My muscles are cramping, I can’t keep my head on straight and I’m cold, Winn. It’s like … a fever? Been a long time since I had one.”

“Hmm,” Winn replies, tapping his pen on the desk.

“This would be strenuous, yes? For a Kryptonian who hadn’t practiced? But you made it sound easy.”

“There is a _reason_ we used starships, Winn. The Military Guild practiced this with infantry but it was ceremonial, really. Not practical. I’m not even sure this would work in a low energy environment like a red dwarf system. So how did the Worldkillers do it? They went hand-to-hand with Daxamite dreadnoughts and jumped between systems on the regular. But for launch, they only had Rao to work with.”

“Alternate fuel source!” they realize at the exact same instant.

“So let’s assume your extra-sexy Worldkiller bits are kicking in,” he suggests. “but not on purpose. It’s because you’re scared. Say you’re a human but you just did something like a marathon but it’s your first time. You’re body is dehydrated and your nerve cells are low on calcium. Your body has run out of stuff you need to think straight and fire your muscles. You go into electrolytic shock.”

“In my case, energy shock. My cells are entangling all over the place, dumping the waste before it hurts me. My skin is shielding me from a star trying to cook me and somehow it doesn’t even feel _hot_. Self-preservation is operating with the Worldkiller grafts but metabolism is not. Yet.”

“I’m not taking it in fast enough to replace it and I can’t just _make_ myself because this whole mess was a reflex thing.”

“Yep,” Winn agrees with his little pop at the end.

“Winn! I need fuel,” Kara squeals. “Like, ten extra-large pizzas when I get back but also literally. I need starship fuel!”

“Oh fuck. Kara, you would need something with crazy energy to mass ratio. Something that cannot possibly occur naturally. Something fancy. But you are in a star system filled with cavemen. We’re fresh out of fuel depots.”

Kara twirls in place, waving her arms through the burning hydrogen. It wafts toward her, drawn in by her skin. She focuses on a target – herself – and claps her hands together. The blaze around her bunches up into a sphere between her palms for a split second until the warp field breaks.

_The swimming pool back home shouldn’t have exploded like that. I should have jumped out of it. Something built up and then broke. In order for there to be feedback, there had to be a loop. I just need to stop before I explode the pool._

“Winn.”

“Y-y-yeah?” he asks. He sounds really worried for her. He’s probably kicking himself for suggesting the faster-than-light thing for a trial run.

“I’m going to go make some. I need to find enough uranium in an asteroid to go supercritical three times with about fifty kilotons each.”

“M’kay. Not following yet but...caveman over here. What I can tell you is you’re looking for about 50 kilograms of pure Uranium-238. Uranium-235 will work but takes a lot more if it’s not enriched. Which takes a centrifuge.”

Kara looks out to the gap between Mars and Jupiter. There are more than a few rocks large enough on the far side of the belt. Sooner or later, one of them will be uranium bearing.

“So I need uranium, a running start, time to build up some speed and another asteroid just like it. I tee them up, detonate the first one, plow into the second and third and gather it all in close. Stretch my field around myself enough to carry the whole mess and then clamp down. Fly into the _second_ asteroid as fast as I can sub-lightspeed and do a hard stop. When I get to zero motion, I collapse the warp bubble.  I’ll have maybe half a cubic meter of low-grade White Sand for a split second.”

“That’s what White Sand is?” he sputters. “I figured it was a drug.”

“Nah. Just the agreed upon slang for small white crystals with a mindfuckingly high energy potential. Homebrew won’t be stable like the processors over Argo made but it will still work.”

“Still need to enrich the uranium and shape it,” he reminds her. “Which is not even getting in to the space curvature slash elecromagnetic wackiness needed to bottle up an atomic blast.”

Kara flips the bird at the sun. _Nice try_ , _toasty. But I’m going home._

“I think I did that last part accidentally when I was eight. As for the centrifuge? Pfft. All that does is make it easier to start off. I can hit things _really_ hard. Like you said, Ka-Pow!”

Winn laughs.

“That’s true,” he agrees, cracking another can of soda. “You got this.”

* * *

**March 10, 2006 | Alex Danveurs**

Department of Extraterrestrial Operations Headquarters AKA “The Anvil”

Continental United States

###    
  


Alex strains over her head, reaching for the plasma cut-off switch. The glassy orange panel lights up for a split second when she makes contact but a sharp ache in her shoulder reminds her of her limits.

“Right. Human arms bend the wrong way,” Alex mutters.

“Result, Danvers?” General Mitchell asks.

“Tell engineering that we need to reroute control eight-eight,” she replies. “Unless one of our teams wants to get boiled off into gas in an emergency. Sixty-one, forty-two and eighteen we can skip. Nine, six and one-hundred-twelve need to be on the main panel. Since these were defanged by the dealer, the whole right-hand panel is free game. That was weapons. Let’s re-use it.”

_I’m going to be dreaming about Helgrammite symbols for weeks. At least the scrapper detoxed them first. No chlorine smell._

“Can we even move it, Danvers? The last four crews that went in there came back with nothing. We can cut the alloy but we can’t touch the power lines. Let alone the engines.”

She switches her radio off so that she doesn’t accidentally talk to herself and give Echo away.

[Echo?]

[Mono-molecular blade to cut the sheathing and a laser capable of two-megawatt pulses of at least three nanoseconds to reseal it. The lines can be restarted by four hundred thousand amps, hydrogen-three and a heating element at sixty thousand Kelvin. I would appreciate if you let me guide the engine overhaul. I do not wish to see my favorite human reduced to electrons.]

Alex toggles her radio back on.

“Yes, ma’am. Just put me in a room with Jenkins and we can build one. Give us a wish-list of repair tools. By purpose.”

Mitchell swears at some nearby underling and Alex manages to catch ‘horseshit’, ‘up-jumped’ and ‘rat-fucker’. Vasquez’s barking laugh can be heard over the comms.

“Stow it, Operative! One of these days, Danvers, I’m going to figure out your secret,” Mitchell promises. “This isn’t just book-learning. Saw a crash while surfing my _ass_. My office, four minutes.”

[Alex is in trouble…]

[Not another word, you overgrown heating coil!]

Alex taps on the cargo door controls.

“Stand by, opening cargo door. Have a pleasant and prosperous life, Alex Danvers of the Department of Extraterrestrial Operations. Give our regards to your liege-lords and go in peace. May your line prosper in service to scion of Erok-El the Wise, the Shield of Argo, Hero of the Battle of Klymar Gate, Breaker of Dax-.”

Two bolts from her sidearm is enough to shut down the computer. _Betrayed by an overly formal trading computer._ That’s one way to blow her cover.

She knows for a fact that her radio was still on.

[So, Echo. Seeing as how I don’t have the house sigil tattooed on my forehead, tell me again me how no one can detect you?]

[It...it hides me from Earth tech. But i seems that I have some work to do on that front, Alex.]

“After that stunt, make it one minute, Danvers.”

Vasquez falls in beside her the instant her boots hit the hanger floor.

“Having fun, Suz?” Alex snaps. “Seeing the smart girl taken down a notch?”

A sharp rap in the ribs from Vasquez’s baton gets Alex’s attention.

“You think that’s it?” Vasquez asks, her face split by a toothy smirk. “No. I can’t wait to hear your explanation! Sometime soon, at Stomper’s, shots on me. Besides...”

Vasquez breaks into a jog beside her as they move towards the ops center.

“I could never hate you. You’re the second-baddest bitch in barracks twelve. Hoo-rah!”

“Hoo-rah!” Alex barks back.  “Don’t ever change, Suz.“

_If Vasquez isn’t scared, how bad could it be?_

None of the four sentries usually posted at the general’s door are present. Alex has no idea what to make of that. She raps sharply on the door.

“Enter. Vasquez, watch the door. I don’t care if God wants in. Make him take a number. If its’s the president, make him take a higher number.”

Vasquez sets up on the right side of the door, one hand on her radio and one on her sidearm.

Mitchell is behind the desk, leaning back in her chair with her hands behind her head. Which would explain the lack of sentries. With soldiers at the door there would be some minimum standard of decorum.

Alex gives her best salute and waits, forcing herself to breathe. Mitchell pulls a bottle of Johnny Walker Black from the drawer along with two tumblers.

“Drink? It’s not poisoned. So,” Mitchell begins, rubbing her hands together. “How do you know Superman?”

“Beg pardon?”

“If Lois Lane’s interview is to be believed, his birth name was Kal-El. From what we know, family name comes after the hyphen. El. He hasn’t shared much with us. But we weren’t just grabbing around trying to find our own asses before you got here, Danvers.”

“Ma’am, at this time I surrender myself to the military police. Under the Third Geneva Convention, Part II, Articles 13 and 16, it is unlawful for a member of the armed services to torture prisoners of war. I also invoke my rights under the Fifth Amendment should I be tried in civilian court.”

Mitchell sits there, fists clenched. Not moving a muscle. Finally she blows out a long breath, schooling her temper.

“For god’s sake, Danvers. Calm down, sit down and drink the damn whiskey. That is a direct order from your superior officer.”

“Ma’am.”

Alex takes the drink and drops into the chair opposite Mitchell.

Mitchell re-opens her desk and takes a framed photo out.

“This is mutually assured destruction, Danvers. I don’t know why you think I will hurt whoever it is you are protecting and I can’t seem to reach you. Which is my failure as a commander. So I am going to give you leverage to hurt me. Maybe that will help us move forward.”

She turns the photo around.

Mitchell and another woman are framed by a trellis of white roses, nose to nose in what may be the most _sickeningly_ adorable wedding photo Alex has ever seen. Mitchell has never looked so nervous since Alex met her. Maybe because that’s not General Mitchell, who puts whisky in her desk first thing when they move bases, swears just to fill space in her sentences and keeps her grandfather's Colt 1911 with its notches from Omaha beach next to her phone.  That’s Shay Mitchell, whoever exactly that is, putting everything at risk for someone who she really cares about.

“Not what you were expecting, Danvers?”

“You are trusting me with that? You cou-”

“Be dishonorably discharged. I am violating Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. I am giving you the ammunition to end a twenty-eight year career. You could topple the highest-ranking woman in the Army just by mentioning that photo’s existence.”

Mitchell doesn’t look afraid, for some reason. Alex gulps. _Because she knows I won’t do it. She trusts me just like I have not trusted her._

“What’s her name?” Alex asks, voice thick.

“Cameron Chase. She works at the FBI. That was taken in Vermont. Happiest day of my life and no one can ever know. Not like our vows would mean anything to a judge. She is still Chase and I’m still Mitchell.”

Alex tips her glass back at Mitchell – no, she decides, for it’s Shay – and smiles.

“I hope that changes some day. My parents never looked that mushy with each other...and I certainly can’t complain about my childhood. Cameron is a lucky woman.”

Shay laughs.

“Funny you say that. Vasquez made a comment about her ass.”

Alex sputters a glass of sixty-year-old whisky all over her mechanic’s suit.

“Was that last week? When she had a black eye?”

Shay clicks her tongue and tips her glass towards Alex.

“Right. Vasquez let you get a free shot. So you...”

Shay slides the photo back in the desk.

“Show that only to important personnel who I would trust with my life? Show that only to good soldiers who I cannot afford to lose if this agency is to succeed? Yes and yes.”

“It’s a pawn sacrifice,” Alex realizes. “draw out the knight.”

“You did pay attention in my social engineering training, didn’t you? I needed to give you something big to get your attention before you committed _seppuku_. So...my secret is named Chase.”

Alex sighs.

“And mine is named Kara. Kara Zor-El and now Kara Danvers.”

Mitchell hums.

“Sister, huh?  She was on my list of possibilities. We knew it wasn’t your mother, your father is dead. But your sister has a suspicious high school transcript to say the least. If you deduct her one failed class – gym – she has a four point GPA. While juggling three academic competitions and a painting extracurricular. Now why might she fail gym and only gym?”

Alex blushes. She had begged Kara to either ace gym or throw another class.

“She was still mastering her puny human act, ma’am. Her pride in her classwork wouldn’t let her fail a class unless passing would actually risk human life. I advised her to fail at least one test in math just to spite us for our apparently piss-poor excuse for calculus.”

“Kara is your secret weapon. Kryptonian, clearly. High-ranked too, judging by the curtsy the cargo pod gave you. It addressed you as a noblewoman. According to the cultural summary Superman’s robot gave us, most houses could not do that for their client families. Down here, only the Queen of England can knight someone.”

Alex chuckles.

“Honestly, I didn’t even know that sort of anointing was a thing until ten minutes ago.”

“But you knew she was high-ranking. To be quite honest, most of what I know about the history of the House of El is that their coat of arms looks like an S.”

Color rises in Alex cheeks.

“They have a bit more to be proud of than just their penmanship, ma’am. The exploits that pod was listing are just the start of a bloodline that goes back to our last ice age...of which my sister is the last member. Kal has never formally been inducted and his pod's data core is basically shot.  I’m afraid he knows next to nothing.”

“Why not?” Mitchell asks, tucking the bottle back in the drawer. “I need to be sober for this, I think. Superman is apparently much less important than we have been assuming.”

“He left as an infant and she left when she was fourteen,” Alex replies. ”She was supposed to start an enclave here, raise him and decide if they wanted to contact humanity. Due to a near-miss with a black hole, she got delayed by twenty-four years.”

“So he was raised in Kansas. Kara was raised in a Citadel in Argo City, which was a financial and research hub. She had just blown away the Science Guild exams and would have taken her father’s fellowship at the university the next orbital cycle if the planet hadn’t died. Her mother was chair of their highest criminal court and her aunt was once the most experienced commander active in their military.”

“So he has some goodbye video his parents sent and she lived it for half her life,” Mitchell realizes.

She looks impressed, which Alex finds unnerving more than anything.

The General’s ideas of impressive has meant close-range fights with a half-dozen injured Xinda cut off from their host, retrieving a drunk and belligerent Helgrammite from the middle of a crowded a road club in Texas and talking a heartbroken Thessalian out of killing herself with a black hole in downtown New York City. That was in the last five weeks.

“Danvers, this is everything we need right now. You grew up with an alien whose privilege meant that she was well-educated, well-connected, well-traveled. Which means that you are the only one here who has dealt with an alien socially. Small talk. Heard stories about their worlds. Heard their rumors, their legends, their prejudices. Our people meet them only as arresting officers or if we screw up as hostile combatants.”

This bothers Mitchell, it seems to Alex. Just keeping the public in the dark is not enough for her. She wants to do something more profound than damage control.

“No war in human history has ever been won without friendlies on the other side. Traitors, sympathizers, informants, propagandists. Hell, no police department functions without that sort of thing. Right now, we don’t have that. The best we have is the aliens we turn loose and quite frankly I don’t blame them for not wanting to be on payroll. I want a proposal from you by 0900 tomorrow on how we begin to develop friendly non-human assets.”

“Besides my sister?”

“Obviously. I won’t ask you to betray her.”

“Understood. I’ll start with Shaan and see what I can get.”

“I’ll assume that was a proper name and take your word for it.”

“Thessalian suicide attempt last Friday,” Alex offers. “When I explained the potential size of the singularity she was staring into, she was horrified. She meant to kill herself, not kick off something that could gobble up the eastern seaboard. I think she’ll do us, or at least do me, a favor.”

“Excellent work today, soldier. I thank you for your courage just now. Dismissed.”

Mitchell stands and salutes. Alex returns it.

“Please send that rabid animal you call a best friend on your way out. I want to tune up our close quarters combat guidelines.”

 

* * *

###  **June 11, 2006 | Alex Danvers**

Crayford, Texas   


 

On the hill at the edge of the subdivision, Vasquez sips from her lemonade, dark eyes hidden behind blue-tinted aviators.

Alex keeps one hand on the sunglasses she rigged up, a truly hideous thrift store pair with acid-green, scalloped frames. They were perfect for the projection lenses and camera array she and Echo cooked up. The borrowed rocking chair creaks pleasantly on the painted slats.

On the street, her ‘dead’ minivan sits with the hood propped open. She told the old lady who owns this house it would take four hours for a tow truck. Because this is a town of four hundred that preaches Southern hospitality on the billboard at city limits, she was practically adopted on the spot.

Down the hill from the cafe and one door from Alex is an elementary school.

Children play in the baking Texas sun, watched over by a flock of four teachers. All of them female, all of them young, all of them well turned out.

“This makes sense,” Vasquez admits. “If I were an alien, I’d pick those teachers too.”

“Hot for teacher, eh Vasquez?” Reynolds asks from across the table.

“You’d tap that, Reynolds. Don’t lie.”

Whatever bond Reynolds and Vasquez have developed, it’s deep. He seems willing to protect Vasquez’s dirty little secret no matter how much she pesters, mocks and insults him. The only question is how Reynolds found out about Vasquez’s ex-wife. Alex spent six months of nagging just to get her middle name and they were best friends by then.

When she did share the story with Alex last night, it was a classic: booze, matching tattoos and a pre-enlistment blowout which somehow collided with a bridal shower in the hallway of Caeser’s Palace. Vasquez ended up with the maid of honor _and_ the male stripper although she claims they gave him the boot right off. Considering how stupid the marriage was Alex was surprised to hear Vasquez call the divorce the part that ‘made us best friends’.

It turned that Gay Vasquez has a lot more stories to tell than Angry Vasquez does and they’re much funnier. Alex is glad she and Susan can talk about all of it now that Shay and Vasquez and Alex are all equally screwed if the Army finds out their secret wife, ex-wife and alien sister, respectively.

“Which one?”

“Why pick?” Vasquez shoots back.

Reynolds and Vasquez are newlyweds house-hunting for the purposes of this op so their playful bickering only adds flourish to the cover. Their married cover is a small bit of Alex’s revenge for that sucker punch during PT yesterday morning. The fake baby bump Vasquez is wearing is the real revenge.

Alex will probably be given the widest berth out of pity, a lost out-of-towner with car trouble and no cell phone. It really only required unburying her Maryland accent and sprinkling in some real – and faked – east-coast idioms.

“Cut the chatter ladies,” Alex snaps. “you too, Vasquez.”

“Understood. Any hits?” Vasquez asks.

“Not sure,” Alex admits. “Nothing on infrared even looks weird. I’ve got four teachers, thirty kids, all of them either human or too good at faking it for it to matter. You sure this is the school?”

“I trust my contact’s approach,” Vasquez replies. “and the approach led us straight here. Besides, this West Texas. Hotter than the devil’s asscrack and I would know. There is no infrared here. It’s all just white.”

“Or green,” Reynolds adds. “What? Depends on the rifle, depends on the scope.”

Pham Demos has been given very explicit orders not to say anything. As the fucking new guy he has not earned the right to talk and been told as much before they left. Which is why Alex chuckles very unprofessionally when he does suddenly speak. No other rookie ever took that 'official FNG protocol' seriously and certainly not for six hours.

“Think I have something, ma’am. Ma’ams.”

“Explain yourself, Demos...or I extend FNG for the rest of your tour.”

“Red floral print, by the gate in the fence. She’s passing something through the fence.”

They all started identifying the teachers by their clothes hours ago. It’s the only identifier that really works with four twenty or thirty-something women, blondes or bottle-blond and all with long hair cuts. Vasquez claimed it was called the ‘Christian’ hairstyle and the raw pain in her voice in at that moment made Alex feel like she needs to hug Vasquez, ideally once a day. She will first have to find out if non-violent physical contact with Vasquez is possible.

Alex taps her sunglasses, magnifying the area in question.

“To whom? There’s no one on the other side.”

“Then were are those rolled-up papers going?” Demos asks. “I buzzed the fence line with the drone. Looks like maybe math homework? Lot of numbers. At least fifty sheets so far.”

Sure enough, every few seconds another roll of printouts leaves the woman’s oversized purse only to be pulled slowly out of her hand and vanish into thin air inch-by-inch. The papers are being passed into something or someone with a cloaking system.

“Not bad, kid. Your FNG status is temporarily revoked. Keep the drone on that area. Danvers out. Demos, rally on the van in two. Reynolds and Vasquez, ready up.”

She taps the earpiece of the sunglasses three times.

“Anvil Leader, this is Bloodhound Actual. Checking in.”

“Go for Anvil,” the operator replies. “We read you five-by-five.”

“We have located non-human activity at an elementary school. Site three. We are moving to follow target and going radio silent for fifteen.”

“Understood.”

Alex reaches into her pocket and grabs the switch she rigged into the van. Cranking it back and forth twice, she hears the thump of the capacitor discharging under the hood. The engine sputters and then roars back to life.

The little old lady whose porch she is borrowing cracks open the front door.

“Oh good, dearie. You got it.”

“Yes,” Alex replies, finishing the drizzle left in her sweet tea. She wiggles the key fob. “Turns out I just needed to keep pushing the button for an hour. You were very kind.”

She reaches into her pocket for some cash.

“Oh no, I couldn’t possibly. Thank you for your service.”

Her earpiece tells Alex that Vasquez has switched channels and radioed her.

“Grandma just made you,” she warns Alex. “Not sure I like that.”

[Echo?]

[Grandma is not an alien.]

[That’s a good start.]

“I’m flattered, ma’am but-”

The old woman laughs.

“These eyes don’t lie. My dear Robert was a Navy man. Thirty-eight years in. He had a way of standing, tall and straight. Real still and nervous, like a cat in a rocking chair factory. Did it even when he was retired. Did it till the day he died. He stood _exactly_ the same way you do.”

Three beeps indicate a change of channel on in her radio. Vasquez’s voice is in her ear almost a full octave lower than usual.

“Oh, hell no!” Vasquez grumbles. “Navy? No, you could eat the whole fucking Navy for fucking breakfast. Alex...I do not care if she is nine hundred years old and in a wheelchair. You are Army, Alex. Salty, hard, and ice cold. You will not put up with that kind of disrespect.”

_Pride. Rage. Being proud of the rage. Nice to know Vasquez hasn’t been pod-personed._

“Thank you for your hospitality,” Alex tells the old woman, tucking the twenty under the glass. “but in the Army, they teach us to take care of our neighbors.”

“Fair enough, young lady.”

She waves from her porch as Alex pulls out.

Collecting the team from the cafe takes longer than it should because a preacher has cornered Vasquez to pray over her for using ‘the devil’s language’ and Reynolds is desperately looking for an exit route. Several passersby seem to have joined in, fearing for Vasquez’s unborn child. Alex hands Vasquez her sidearm the moment she climbs in.

“Should’ve had that on me,” Vasquez grumbles.

The prosthetic baby bump she was wearing hits the floor hard enough to crack in half. Looks like Vasquez really did play volleyball in college.

“Don’t lie. You would have zapped a hole in his Bible,” Alex teases.

“Exactly! Bolt of lightning from Heaven! Make him keep his prayer hands to himself. Men like him in towns like this are why they invented therapy,” she grumbles.

The air-conditioning makes waiting much more pleasant. After recess, they move the drone over the school building so that all access can be tracked.

Demos is hunched over the laptop, watching the drone’s feed. He is completely unruffled by the chumminess of the rest of the team, neither rising to the bait nor shrinking back. It remains to be seen if Demos has a personality but he does have skills and a quiet professionalism.

At least in the field. No one has yet survived the Charge of The Miller Light Brigade without making a fool of themselves to Alex, Vasquez or both.

 _He’ll do for now,_ Alex decides.

“Bloodhound, this is Anvil.”

Alex gestures for the radio and Demos hands it over.

“Go for Bloodhound Actual.”

“Update on site three.”

“We have located non-human activity at an elementary school. Some kind of camouflage system being used to smuggle papers through the fence.”

There’s a click on the other end.

“Bloodhound, this is Anvil Actual. Do you believe the documents being smuggled were a threat?” General Mitchell asks.

“No ma’am. They appeared to be math homework...strange as it sounds.”

“Operative Vasquez, how credible do you believe your tip is?”

“Very, ma’am. This confirms it. Operative Danvers concurs that the chemicals being stolen are a match for nutrients needed for Helgrammites. Stolen food plus under-the-table homework equals underground school which matches the tip. They’re running scared but want to make sure things seem normal.”

“If children are involved, Rakni-Xinda are a possibility,” Demos adds.

Alex turns and looks at him like he just grew a second head.

“Elaborate your theory, Corporal Demos,” Mitchell demands. “Quickly.”

Much to his credit, he doesn’t react audibly to the dressing down but he did hesitate before reaching for the switch on his radio. _Maybe he is ready to leave the Army,_ Alex decides. _He wanted to be called ‘operative’._

“According to Operative Danver’s rather...” he pauses. “...deep briefing packet, Helgrammites need significant chlorine and fluorine in their diet for life. However Rakni-Xinda need also extensive exposure to toxins and diseases to train their immune systems, but only when they’re young. In large doses, chlorine is toxic.”

If a pin dropped in the van right now, they would all dive for cover.

“Operative Danvers?” Mitchell finally asks.

“He’s correct. That quantity of chlorine would set a Helgrammite adult up for five years. Excessive to steal so much at once.  On the other hand, a brood of infant Rakni-Xinda would be able to use that up in a matter of weeks. Two shipments have been hit this year.”

“Very well. Proceed with the raid. But walk soft,” Mitchell warns them. “I want good news.”

The school bell rings and children pour out of the door into the arms of mothers and older siblings and in one case, a taxi. Red Floral Print gets into her car moments after the bus pulls away, much to the irritation of her colleagues.

“Follow her, Reynolds. Fifty meters minimum. Demos, buzz her with the drone. Get plates, VIN on the vehicle. Circle it and get three hundred and sixty degree imaging.”

“Aye-aye.”

The road they take is long and bumpy, leading out of the town into the scrub brush. Over the next hour they learn that the target's Volkswagen needs three dents removed, was made in Mexico City and has a bikini-shaped air freshener in the back window.

“She’s pulling off, right...there.”

Alex looks over at the tablet.

“Good catch, Demos. Two in one day. We’ll make a man out of you yet.”

“Is that a _plus_ or a _minus_ in this unit?” he asks.

Vasquez coughs, stares out the window, then just starts guffawing.

“Oh yeah,” she finally wheezes. “He’s one of us.”

They park a quarter-mile back behind the rise of the hill. Vasquez leads Demos through a gear check, reminding him no fewer than four times that his frame’s hydraulic gauge is upside-down. When he finally gets it seated, she rewards him with a thump on the back of the neck.

“That goes into the red, pull the cord for the explosive bolts. Better to fight with no help than have the suit fighting you.”

Alex cracks open the weapons crate in the back. It’s better than Christmas, enough to take out a column of enemy armor.  But she needs to somehow raid a remote farmhouse in a friendly manner.

“Flashers and stunners,” Alex decides.

“Demos, you haven’t had your cherry popped yet. Look sharp.”

She tosses a flasher at his feet. It lets out a deafening bang combined with a searing flash of light. He hadn’t turned on his countermeasures yet, as she had feared.

“Take sixty seconds and get your head on,” she tells him. “Don’t pick it up. Until that thing resets, it’s like licking a downed power line.”

“Everybody gets three of those.” She hands out the flashers. “Bring them back if humanly possible. Reusable grenades aren’t cheap.”

“Two of these beauties.”

At least Demos seems to recognize the arc pistols.

“You’ve trained on these?” she tells Demos.

“Not qualified yet. Six hours on the range, ma’am.”

_That’s just perfect. One man isn't even qualified on the weapon.  This is going to be a clusterfuck._

“Good. You know not to try and put bullets in it then. Electrical discharge on line of sight. On minimum setting, effective up to thirty meters. On maximum, they’re effective up two hundred. It shoots _straight_ , you understand? The charge follows a laser. So don’t aim it like you would a firearm. There are no moving parts so if it jams, stow it and grab the other. I will diagnose any gremlins back at base.”

“Why not have it on maximum all the time, then?” he asks.

_Smart kid._

“Same reason Captain Kirk didn’t set phasers to kill,” Reynolds replies, checking the snaps on his holster. “No need to be a murdering asshole right off the bat.”

“Non lethal use, close range only. Can do, ma'am.”

Alex pulls out the two largest guns in the crate. Each has an oversized barrel wreathed with humming electrodes and broken into three sections by shock absorbers. She doubts she will _need_ to shoot down any Chinese satellites today but Alex likes options. Demos cocks an eyebrow.

"Railguns, Corporal. Three-ounce steel slugs moving with a muzzle velocity measured in kilometers per second.. Just in case something nasty is waiting. Believe me when I tell you that you do _not_ want to try fire one of these before you’ve worked it into your physical training.”

“Vasq!” she calls, tossing the second one.

Vasquez grabs it by the strap and slings it over her back.

Back to back with one soldier facing each compass point, they move a few feet at a time.

The farm seems unused and the tractor is nothing but rust propped up by flat tires. Six fat cows graze on the top of the hill without any feed troughs or ranching gear in sight. The farmhouse is freshly painted but missing more than half the windows. Hastily installed power lines lead to the wooden barn. Six barrels of chemicals are stacked along the wall with a protective mask hung on the wall and tongs on top of each.

They make use of a concrete shed a hundred feet from the barn to take a breather.

“Speak your mind,” Alex whispers. “I want opinions.”

With just Vasquez and Reynolds, she always gets ideas for dealing with at least two kinds of nasty surprises. Hopefully with Demos, she can get even more.

“Don’t like it,” Reynolds mutters. “Lot of power, chemical barrels, middle of nowhere. Republican congressional district. Reminds me of every skinhead’s bomb shop I ever saw. We sure this is aliens? Looks like basic terrorism to me.”

“You’re not FBI anymore,” Alex reminds him. “and God have mercy on any skinhead who meets me.”

“Reynolds,” Vasquez begins. “I grew up a town just like this and I can tell you this is kind of setup would not even be a two on the inbred hick shit-o-meter. No cross painted on the barn. No bearded mouth-breathers on guard duty. No women in white nightgowns. No water tank to baptize people in. That preacher in town...if this were that sort of shit he would be running it, no question. If he’s not out here, we’re fine.”

Demos points at the barrels.

“Six tongs. One mask. Why?”

Alex takes another look at the tongs.

“You were right. Rakni-Xinda. The hosts could fit in the barrels and someone could help them immerse a symbiont in the chemicals with the tongs. Cut, expose, heal, rinse, repeat. Clamping the tongs on the barrels would keep the symbiont exposed without being hands on. One person could help multiple hosts at once.”

“That’s good, right?” Demos asks.

“For them, yeah. The host is smart but it’s slower and weaker without a swarm bonded to it and the swarm may be tough as nails but it can’t do anything too fancy without vocal cords or hands. Take care of your body, it takes care of you.”

“We move up,” she decides. “Quick and quiet.”

The distinctive ‘zing’ of an arc pistol draws Alex’s attention. A rattlesnake is writhing on the ground two feet behind her, a patch of scales melted solid by the voltage.

Reynolds holsters his weapon.

“No offense, Danvers but I’m not sucking anything out of any wounds.”

“Noted.”

Demos and Reynolds move up to the tractor with Alex covering them. Vasquez follows before moving to the edge of the barn. She puts her free hand on the railgun and nods to Alex.

Here goes. Tugging her vest so it hangs straight and brushing her shoulders, Alex knocks on the door. With no one answering and finding it unlocked, she pushes it open. At her feet, a dark cloud of purple smoke gathers before disappearing, leaving only a perfectly spherical crater in the dirt.

“Singularity trap. Pretty cool,” Alex tells the empty barn. “Like to meet the girl who did that. White sand trigger or just a big lump of carbon?”

“Who are you?” calls a female voice that seems to come from all sides at once.

“A friend, I hope. Saw you guys sneaking some homework from the school. Me and my pals thought it would be nice to have a talk. See if we can get you a better building.”

“You think this is funny?” the voice coughs.

“Actually, no. I saw six tanks for treating immature symbionts out back and enough cows for a couples week’s food, two months tops. The fact that you’re using a trap rather than being in my face tells me you’re scared, or hurt, and that’s OK. It’s why I’m here.”

“She’s not CADMUS,” a little boy whines. “She seems nice.”

“Shut it, Voll. We don’t know who she is. Could be a trap. Teacher isn’t here and she told me to keep you safe.”

“She’s not CADMUS and you’re hurt,” the boy sniffs. “I’m cold and you’re hurt. We need a grownup to help us.”

“I’m not sure what a CADMUS is,” Alex calls out. “But I can tell you that I already don’t like them. I’m going to reach in my pocket now. You’ll need to drop the micro-singularities to see it.”

Alex reaches into a thigh pocket and pulls out a stack of fabric patches. Each one bears the mark of a different mercenary company or crime syndicate and each is stained in the blood of the man who wore it. She flicks them out into the straw like playing cards.

“I took these off men I killed. Men who were hurting innocents. Innocents like you. Helgrammites and K’Hund and Rakni-Xinda and Coluan and Thes-”

Before Alex can blink, she is facing a purple-skinned Thessalian girl with one hand held out to keep Alex back and a singularity quickly forming in the other. Her scales are damp and dewy and she’s favoring her right leg. A thin stream of coppery fluid is gradually staining her blue jeans.

She has a fever and from the looks of it, an open wound.

“Don’t you dare!” the girl snarls. “You do not get to talk about my people, not after what you did to my mother.”

Alex puts her hands on her head.

“I’m going to turn around and get on my knees. So I’m trusting you not to kill me. In my backpack, at the bottom, you’ll find a hidden pocket. There’s a bottle of refined white sand. Not much, but it should help you until I can get you to a hospital. Wrapped around the bottom of the vial is a picture. Look at the picture and I think you’ll understand me a bit better.”

“Go on, take it.”

She hears a rustling of feet on the straw and feels a momentary tug on her backpack straps. The gas sealing the white sand canister crackles as it snap-freezes the moisture in the air. The straw around Alex’s knees drifts upwards as the sand spreads through the poor girl’s body, giving her a momentary rush and taking gravity and any loose objects up with it. The sound of paper rustling hopefully means she’s unfolded the photo, not crumpled it.

“Hope the sand helped. See that? That’s me, my sister and my sister’s first girlfriend. Her name is Emilia. She’s like you, except she’s a bit older.”

“Maybe you’re telling me the truth. Maybe you’re not. Get up, don’t turn around. Move.”

Alex lets the kid march her outside, feeling the ever-present tug of a micro-singularity pulling at the hairs on the back of her neck. As soon as they’re through the door, Demos and Reynolds train their arc pistols on the girl and Vasquez shifts her other hand to the railgun. Offering a white sand pick-me-up may have been a mistake. If this girl knows her stuff and keeps herself wound this tight, she could just deflect the slug away from her with a barrier.

“Don’t,” Alex tells them. “We’re just talking, right?”

“Right,” the girl sighs. “You can turn around now.”

The kid leans up against the barn, her legs shaking. It’s hard to gauge – knowing that Emilia was nine hundred and four but looked mid-twenties – but Alex thinks this is a teenager. Her legs and arms are long but rather skinny, she is clumsy, and her neural crests are much skinnier and more flexible than any Thessalian she’s met. The tips are flopping around when she moves her head. Somehow she doesn't seem fully cooked compared to Emilia.

“Our teacher’s dead. The woman who came today was CADMUS, so I killed her. Didn’t tell the others. Had to keep them calm. The disguise was good, probably surgical, and they had the face down pat. But the impostor had no implants. Had to be them.  I heard her turning down an offer for fifty million night before last."

"Fifty million?"

"To buy us," the kid explains, eyes on her sneakers. "Like slaves. I know it happens sometimes. Daxamite princes will pay a lot for someone like me. Just never thought it would be me."

_Starting to get why Daxamites aren't popular. Starting to get why ‘nigger’ hardly bothers Kara but Daxamite makes her see red._

“What kind of implants?” Alex asks.

She hopes that no previously-unheard-of terrorist group has access to cybernetics. She’s the only person in the DEO who knows they’re even possible. Echo is still just her little secret.

“About yea big, silicone, bounce when you slap ‘em?” the girl mumbles, rubbing her neck. “Our actual teacher had them.”

_So a kindergarten teacher with breast implants. Vasquez was not exaggerating about rural Texas’s weirdness._

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. I mean, I know what breasts feel like and these were not the same.  Never with her!” the girl sputters. “She was our teacher. I mean, what the density feels like at a distance. Gravity-wise. I’m young...I certainly wouldn’t know wha-”

 _So that’s what it looks like when a Thessalian is embarrassed,_ Alex realizes. Every scale from her neck up is pressed together. There’s a reflection from the sun in her scales, with no seams left to break up the pattern.

“Easy there,” Alex chuckles. “Don’t be embarrassed. You did see the photo, right?”

“Right. You should have that back. Guessing it’s private.”

She hands it back, once more neatly folded.

“The way she acted felt wrong and I was worried that she wasn’t our teacher. I had to get Tak away from her first, so I offered to help make dinner while she rested. Teacher never let me cook, said we needed to focus on learning. That’s how I knew. Once we were alone in the kitchen, I killed her. I’m the oldest. It was my job.”

_It was my job. Just like that. The same tone of voice I've heard Marines with ten years of awful in their head use after a mission. She's a goddamned infant with centuries and centuries left to live and they've given her nightmares that will tear her apart, assuming I can get her leg wound patched and she actually lives through the week._

“Wow, kid. That’s awful. Are you sure your actual teacher is dead?”

“Pretty sure, yeah. How else would someone else take her place?”

 _Gee, kid...because maybe killing a human is too much for them. That would be wrong! Why kill her when they can knock her out and stuff her in a closet and come kill all these kids while she’s out._ One of the nastiest things this job has taught her is that even the monsters who cut up aliens pride themselves on their morals, whether that be an aversion to hurting humans or to dissecting live specimens or to theft or to double-parking.

“Demos,” Alex calls over her shoulder. “Take Reynolds and search.  Get the FBI in here to help. Report it as a murder, terrorist kidnapping, drug kingpin’s wife, whatever gets us bodies in suits.  Go hit that town until candy falls out.  If she isn’t there, I want you to start hitting the rest of Texas. We find her.  No excuses.”

“Aye-aye.”

“How many others are there?” Alex asks.

The girl rubs her injured leg briskly. It must be going numb on her.

“You need a doctor and funnily enough, I am a doctor. That’s not going to heal out here in the dirt. I want to take you with me but I need to know how many I’m moving and who they are, so I can do it safely.”

“Ten total. Me, Tak...she's Coluan, about my age. Shy.  K'hunds, twin boys. One Helgrammite. Voll, he’s ten. Absolute brat. The littlest ones are the Rakni-Xinda. All female, five of them, genetically identical. Gorgeous eyes. They say identical females are real blessing for the brood.”

Alex smiles.

“From one soul, the waters gave us five.”

The girl nods.

“Yeah. I guess you've heard the blessings.”

“Met an alien or two. I mean,” Alex jokes, “I usually just call them raxxies when I run into them at the mall.”

“Huh. Yeah. My friend back home used to prefer that. Prefers, I guess. She got away. Always said Rakni-Xinda was all stuffy.”

Alex leans into her radio.

“Vasquez!”

Vasquez hurries over after gingerly detaching a crimson-skinned Rakni-Xinda girl from her railgun. She is tiny enough that her four arms were not an advantage over Vasquez beefy hands.

“The safety was on,” Vasquez assures Alex. “and the interlock.”

“That’s good. We need,” she begins. “Four Chinooks for this. I want immersion tanks for all and the Helgrammite tank needs more support equipment.”

“On it, ma’am.”

The raxxie girl is back at Vasquez’s feet now, having moved like a striking cobra. Alex thought she was still by the door. Four little arms are outstretched. A cherry-red face with a fang grin and a massive, shiny and just unfair pair of black eyes, all working a world-class pout.

_Kara would be proud of the kid._

“Up! Up!” she demands. “Piggy-back!”

Alex looks at Vasquez, who is waiting for orders from Alex while also clearly hoping to give the kid whatever she wants in life.  Indefinitely.

“You heard the girl. That was an order.”

Vasquez unclips her grenade belt and sets the railgun on the tractor’s hood.

“You want to hold this for me?” she asks, brandishing what appears to be a plushy version of the monster from Alien.

“Birdie!” the girl squeals, grabbing the toy.

"What's the deal with those, anyway?" Alex mutters, nodding at the stuffed animal.

"Off-worlders seem to always want to pet them. I've been trying to get my sister to explain for ten years."

“They’re called Klixen. Native species on Rak Prime,” the Thessalian tells Alex. “Popular pets all over. Purebreds are pricey but the feral captures are exported in bulk for off-worlders. The real ones have these skin-flap things and in lower gravity, like Earth, they can fly. Crazy smart as animals go, crazy loyal. Kind of silly how the movie made them look all slimy and gross. Rattle is the tidiest pet I’ve ever had. Can I bring him, please? He’s the only living thing I have from before. When I was with my parents.”

_No, I’m even more of a monster than the bad guys…_

“I want you to bring him. I can see what the fuss is about."

Her teenage, shellshocked, fever-delirious new friend actually smiles. Alex is going to help this girl and then she and Vasquez are going to find whatever pompous ass-hole names his torture shed CADMUS and show him what it’s really like to live in a motherfucking Greek tragedy. Railgun round to the balls should get things rolling.

"Birdie makes sense. Like a parrot. But why Rattle?” Alex asks.

“Dunno. I was little. The better question is why not?”

“You know what? Never mind.” Alex replies, holding her hands up in surrender.

Alex looks back to Vasquez and her fan club.

“This is a radio. I’m going to use this and we’re going to get a ride somewhere nice.”

"Ra-d-io!"

_God help us all if Vasquez adopts her. The last thing the world needs is an extraterrestrial apex predator with insane reflexes, accelerated healing, lots of teeth and worst of all her mommy Vasquez’s favorite hobbies._

_No,_ Alex corrects herself. _The last thing we need is her adopting all five._

Alex doesn’t pray much. She should, she always loved her mother’s _challah_ and the peace of temple.  It was hard to believe in the miracle of Passover with Kara across the table from her, the only surviving daughter of thirty billion. Where was God when Krypton needed him? Did they really mean so little?

From the moment Vasquez calls Anvil to the moment she hears 'approaching the LZ' from her radio, she prays.

###    


Mitchell meets them at the hanger with most of the ground crew and half of operations. Everyone must have wanted to see their first officially non-combat sortie. She somehow looms above them, even though two of the mechanics have half a foot on her. Perhaps just the fact that she’s wearing a three-piece suit holding a clipboard while people around her are wearing mechanic’s suits and fatigues and sidearms.

She takes in the alien children, still dripping antibiotic fluid and wearing medical wetsuits, three alien pets of two different species and a pile of books, trinkets and random gizmos either from ‘back home’ or near and dear to the little ones. Demos and Reynolds are helping the Thessalian limp inside. After much needling, she told Alex her name was Tyana Ktenno. Alex hopes Kara hasn’t completely fallen out with Emilia because she doesn’t know shit about the tangled love nest that is Thessalian politics but she feels like Ktenno came up when they were girls.

Vasquez managed to locate the schoolteacher alive, in Austin. All based on a tip from someone at the school who knew her. She split off to black-bag her and bring her here. Cool and collected as Demos was earnest as Reynolds baby blues are, when it came to tough cases it was Vasquez turned out to be the best at hitting things until candy came out. People who were holding out looked at her and they just wanted to help. Strangely enough.

“Danvers,” Mitchell hollers over the thump of still-spinning blades. “I see you’ve turned my base into a damned circus!”

“Friendly aliens as ordered, general!”

“Teacher lady!”

Two of the raxxie girls break past their handlers, beelining for Mitchell and grabbing her legs. She takes it with real humor, considering the gawking that everyone else is engaged in at all those ruby-red fingers clinging to their CO’s pant legs.

Mitchell even rubs one of their hairless heads.  her face demands an explanation from Alex. No words needed.

“They see anyone in dress clothes, they assume schoolteacher!” Alex calls out.

Mitchell laughs.

“I suppose they’ll be needing one, won’t they?”

As Tyana limps by them with Reynold’s help, Mitchell takes one look at the kid before pointing to Alex and turns to her second in command.

“Prep the sickbay and get someone to help the doc.”

As Alex is handing off her armor and helmet to a orderly, Mitchell leans in close.

“Save her life.  Show her that humans can be good,” Mitchell orders.  “No pressure, Danvers.”

* * *

###  **March 12** **th** **, 2006 | Winn Schott**

Mojave Desert

Thirty-six miles south-southeast of National City

###    


Winn, Nadia and Greg huddle close over the topographical map and hold Nadia’s cell phone up to light it. The look she’s been giving Winn all night has probably taken some years of his life. If Kara was a normal human lesbian, she would have called Nadia for help not Winn, but Winn knew about Kara being an alien and Nadia doesn’t. That and only Winn’s cell phone was tied to Kolex’s entangled particle communicator.

He hopes she doesn’t think Kara is cheating on her.

“Ten miles down that gulch,” Winn decides.

“Why am I here?” Greg asks. “She has a car.”

 _Because I would faint if you weren’t here with me,_ Winn thinks. _Because things that scare me don’t scare me if we do them together. Because every day I want to lie down in bed and just give up and not care. So I put a reminder in my phone to call you so I don’t get to sleep in._

Nope, he definitely can’t say all that to this man he’s only been dating exclusively for three months. Mushy proclamations of a life made worth living are probably best handled at home with coffee, not out here with the cactuses...cacti.  Whatever.

“Because your boyfriend is a sharp dresser but he and I can’t haul Kara out of a chair, let alone help her if she’s hurt,” Nadia reminds Greg. “We need muscles and he only brought gayness so we need gay muscles too.”

“It’s not because I like you,” Nadia assures him. “I’m _super_ pissed about the dreads. Those are exclusive shit. Reserved for black girl magic. Just not gonna hit you if Kara’s here.”

Greg chortles, self-consciously brushing his sandy blonde dreadlocks back.

“Good. I was worried we were becoming friends or something!” he jokes.

This is right on the edge and it could go either way. They could become a two-person comedy routine or there could be angry shouting.

“She loves _you_ ,” Greg reminds her. “Winn is just easier to get a hold of sometimes. The man has like three cell phones.”

“One! And...that’s fair. Technically I have three things on me that receive texts.”

“Kara should think of me first,” Nadia sniffs. “She should know I would do _anything_ . Know that I _love_ her.”

“She does. We’ll pick her drunk ass up or whatever and It’ll be fine.”

“Shut up!”

“Fine!”

“By the Black,” Winn groans. “Would you two can it! Kara needs our help!”

“Sorry.” “Yeah, sorry.”

“By the Black?” Nadia asks, nudging Winn.

“Kara’s ex used to say it. She sort of worshipped the stars. It stuck in my brain and I say weird things when I’m scared.”

Nadia squeezes his hand.

“Me too. And for what it’s worth, I know she’s just your friend. You’re like an eight out of six on the Kinsey scale, bro. Elton John would want some pussy if he saw that girl.”

Winn snickers.  “Pretty sure that’s not how it works.” He spins around and points at Greg.

“No jokes! We have a rule!”

Greg grins. “For the purposes of me being bi, Kara does not exist.”

Winn nods.

“She should be here soon,” he sighs, looking at his stopwatch.

Kara being stranded in space sleeping off her transformation bender has made for the longest and scariest three days of Winn’s life.

He offered to let her crash in the dorm but she was not budging until she had a terabytes worth of data from her and Kolex testing her powers. She seemed terrified that she would slip up and hurt someone even though Winn hasn’t heard of that happening in the time he’s known her. The difference between what sloppy Kara could do and what sloppy Kara with mutant superpowers can do is big but it’s still smaller than the gap between what Winn can do and what she can do. He’s just not about to tell her that she was already crazy dangerous if she didn’t pay attention. He wants his bestie back, whether or not she is now theoretically a danger to the Earth’s structural integrity. Maybe it’s selfish.

The idea was for Kara to touch down in the desert and walk over to them. That way she could hit as hard as she needed to and still come walk up to her girl looking normal.

A orange fireball streaks across the night sky, plunging towards the next hill.

“Fuck me stupid,” Winn whispers. “This was not the plan.”

The impact knocks them all off their feet and when he looks up, Kara is there.

“Naked alien!” he shouts before he can stop himself.

Kara is hovering over the sand, bare from head to toe and wrapped in a corona of pure heat. The sand under her is sizzling in to glass as she passes over it. Her stance is wobbly though. Winn has seen her fly enough to know what it looks like when she’s struggling. Having ruled out all forms of alcohol available on campus in the Saint Patrick’s Day Experiment he knows that this isn’t Kara being drunk.

Something else is taking away her control.

“Whoa,” she mumbles stupidly. ”I’m buzzed.  That was a lot to deal with. I think I need a moment. Sorry if I scared you, Nadia.”

Greg is opening and closing his mouth repeatedly.

Winn is really wishing he could be drunk.

Nadia is _broken_. Nadia cannot find words. Nadia cannot apparently, even make her own hands work. She’s still holding the beer bottle she had even after the impact cracked it. A few trickles of blood are seeping from her hand.

“Kara?” she murmurs. “You look different.”

“Yeah, sweetie. Obviously, I wanted to be less dramatic tonight but I missed my landing spot and kinda outed myself, as an alien I mean. I wanted more of a ‘good to be here’ and less ‘surprise! I’m an alien’ and more hugging you, less floating over here afraid to get close.”

“Oh,” Nadia replies, more of an exhalation than a word.

“Yeah, it’s...” Kara sighs. “Something I want to tell everybody but usually don’t get to.”

“Is this why you don’t let me touch you?” Nadia asks, her voice cracking. “I’m good at it, I promise. Or if I’m not I can lea-”

“No!  You are perfect, Nadia. I’m strong, too strong. I would never forgive myself if I hurt you.”

“Greg’s stronger than Winn,” Nadia reminds Kara. “That doesn’t make Winn afraid to touch Greg. I don’t want to have you and not get to touch you, Kara. That’s not fair to me.”

 _Fuck this,_ Winn decides. _I’m taking cover._

“Kara, so glad you’re alive. Greg and I are going to get in the car and listen to some music. You two,” he tells Nadia and Kara. “should sort this out. If you need it, we can toss the tent out the window to you.”

“Remember how stupidly in love with each other you are,” he mutters. “One two three, go.”

* * *

###   **June 12, 2006 | Kara Danvers**

Mojave Desert 

Thirty-six miles south-southeast of National City 

###    


Nadia might not forbid Kara to get dressed but she is not encouraging it and Kara always likes the way Nadia looks at her. Even more so now, after Nadia saw the rest of her.

“So, I’m going to take a leap and say you’re that vigilante who’s got all the horndogs from Greek Row too scared to talk to a _nun_ without breathalyzing her.”

Kara nods.

“I was just setting up a monitoring system when I saw Corrine getting assaulted. Something snapped and I attacked the guy. Broke his collarbone, it turned out. Then when...when I saw you, I thought...” Kara trails off. “Lots of things, clearly. Mostly about my feelings for you. But after that I realized that everyone in danger has someone wanting them to come home safe. So partly Corrine but mostly that someone so amazing was waiting up worrying about her.”

“Ta-da!” Kara whispers. “Origin story.”

“Do you think of hurting people when you’re fighting?”

“Sort of have to.”

“Do you think about hurting people when you have sex?” Nadia finally asks.

“What? Never. No. It,” Kara sighs. “Ugh. I have problems explaining this.”

She sighs.

“I lost _everyone_ when I was little. Like everyone, my whole city, whole planet actually. They died and I saw it happen. So I’m pretty messed up. There are always pieces of me missing or not fitting the way they do for everybody else. I only feel _whole_ when I am with you, Nadia. This body,” Kara sighs, flexing her hands.

“Freaks me out. What it can do, how dangerous it is. It only feels completely mine and makes sense to me when I’m touching you.”

One of Nadia’s tears is running down into Kara’s lap and disappearing between her thighs. Nadia’s eyes are following it, jealous of the drop of water and the trail it is blazing through her folds.

“Could we try it?” Nadia whispers. “My fingers. My mouth. Anything you feel safe with. You know I feel good when we’re together. But I don’t know if you feel _anything_.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“This isn’t only about you, Kara! Sex is _two_ people. A relationship, which I want to think we have, is _two_ people who _talk_ about important shit like this.”

“Ouch. Anyone ever tell you that you’re smart?”

“You. Every other day,” Nadia chortles.

“Not enough. Have to double it.”

“It’s just,” Nadia sighs. “So you’re an alien which means you’re strong and you have all these powers. Which I am not super thrilled about the whole thing and I am not going with you to ComicCon no matter how sexy you are. But alien powers are not what scares you. Hurting me is.”

Kara shrugs.

“That’s the simple version.”

“Then you’re an ass, Kara. Newsflash. Anytime two people get in bed, someone can get hurt a thousand different ways. Anytime a woman my size gets in bed with someone so much bigger and stronger than her, man or woman, she is placing her life in someone else’s hands.”

“Any girl as buff as you could hurt me. Powers or not. Big strong people fuck each other every day all over the world and someone could die each time but they don’t. Because they don’t want to hurt each other, they want to love each other. They choose. Meaning your excuse is crap.”

Nadia slides out from Kara’s grip and splashes the last of her water bottle over her hands.  Kara finds the fact that she had a bar of motel soap ready to go in her pocket is somewhat suspicious.  

_I suppose she didn’t need a condom in her wallet._

“I’m going to make you come, Kara. You’re going to let me make you feel good, you’re going to trust me to know what I can handle and to show you how good you make me feel.  Trust me enough to let me have sex with you. Or we’re done.”

“Are we done? Is that too much for you to trust me, Kara?”

“No,” Kara sniffles. She wipes her tears off her mouth, looking the exact opposite of sexy. “It’s not too much. We’re not done. Think...think I love you, Nads.”

Nadia taps the inside of Kara’s feet.

“So spread ‘em. I’m going to make sure you scare each and every living thing in California that has ears _.”_

Kara complies.

“No more waiting,” Nadia whispers. “No more excuses from you.”

She puts her tongue on Kara’s skin and nothing else matters. Nadia’s small hands knead Kara’s inner thighs and her thumb presses slowly, circling. Any fantasies about how good this _might_ be come true and disappear into what it _actually is_ and then Nadia’s lips do something while wrapped around her clit and there’s a feeling that is so perfect, so bright…Kara is sure it can’t be real.

The orange-pink haze of dawn licking at the edge of the horizon finally pulls them apart.

“I’m getting cold and someone could see us in the light,” Nadia sighs. “So of course you look exactly as fresh as after the first one. Which is kinda scary but also _damn_. Guess my spring break is booked, eh Kara?”

Kara Danvers is not here. Kara Zor-El is not here. Her mind is drifting at the edge of the universe in its first moments, when it was still the size of her hand, saying thank you for the events that led to Nadia.

It isn’t until Nadia bites her ear that she gathers her senses.

The rescue crew left town in a panic so the clothes they brought Kara turn out to be all men’s clothes and from a farm store. Kara doesn’t mind and Nadia definitely does not mind watching her get them on.

Greg is very busily engaged with the radio when Kara finally gets in the car. Winn is snoozing on the steering wheel when the fun started and he didn’t wake up which was a pretty clever plan on his part. Nadia doesn’t even pretend to clean up, wearing her wet chin and throat as a badge of honor. _Nor did she feel like putting her underwear back on,_ Kara realizes when reflexively she checks the coat pocket for her dorm keys.

“We’re good, Winn.” Nadia declares.

“Winn!” she shouts, smacking his seat.

“Yes ma’am, driving now ma’am. Not pissing off the scary black lady.”

Kara snorts.

“He means you.”

“Wait, what? She’s...well, big! And that’s without the hidden features.”

“Kara is a kitten playing with a balloon inside a snow globe,” Winn sighs. “A really big kitten, but the point stands! She’s so nice to me as a roomie that it makes _me_ feel a bit guilty whenever Greg pops a boner around her...and I should get to be jealous.   He’s supposed to be mine!”

“Dude, not cool,” Greg whines.

“Nadia? You’re like, all passionate and righteous and _protesty_ and _marchy_ and believe in stuff. I’m embarrassed when you go to some important protest and freeze your butt off and I didn’t know it was even a thing people worried about.”

“Just drive,” Nadia replies, lips curled tight at the corners to conceal the actual grin behind them. “Drive before I start to get used to seeing your lily-white ass.”

She tilts her head smugly to Kara.

“You’re nice too, Kara.”

“Yes,” Kara replies, rebooted from her most recent orgasm by Nadia’s voice.

“Nice. That was,” she wets her lips. “very nice.”

“You’re blushing,” Nadia giggles. “Jesus. It really was your first time, wasn’t it?”

“Sooooo...Winn. Do I rule the universe now? Because you said she’s the biggest fish out there and not to brag but hell yes to brag, she is _oozing_ right now.”

“Kinda gross,” he grumbles.

“Winn. Lesbian’s car you’re driving. My car.  So if I want a girl getting wet in my back seat, there’s going to be a girl getting wet in my back seat. You and Greg going to have to carry her inside...then I’m gonna make her email all her profs…you’re going to vanish and we’re going to just...mmm!” Nadia squeals, squirming in her seat.”

Kara doesn’t even want to say anything. The stupid, smug, giddy face Nadia keeps making is the best thing she’s seen all night and tonight had some pretty good things.

Winn flicks the radio on and finds some classic rock. His fingers keep time with the turn signal as they wait for an opening on the highway.

“Ask your girl about the universe thing. Not ruling it out. You’ll have to put some food in her, though. She gets tired and dopey after badassing around campus unless she gets something greasy. This was badassing around more than just campus.”

Kara yawns.

“I can order something. Phone me, Winn.”

He hands it back.

Kara taps at the button for X-Treme Jumbo and hits the ‘add’ button until the counter cooperates with her.

“Really?”

“How many, Nads?” Winn asks.

Kara throws her arm around Nadia, tugs her close and sniffs her hair.

“No pet names for Winn. She is Na-d-ia to you.”

“Twelve, Winn.”

“Yeah, that tracks,” Winn teases, looking up at them in the rear-view. “I figure the rest of us can put a dent in two.”

Kara keeps poking at the order button but nothing happens. Her brow is furrowed, making a little crinkle right between her eyes.

“Winn! You phone is busted. I can’t make the flat thing make someone bring us food,” Kara whines. “Earth is so primitive.”

“Let me see, you big lump,” Nadia snickers.

“Winn! Your card is declined.”

“Crap. Uh, the thing is…”

Greg turns around to face them from the passenger seat.

“The thing is he’s maxed out his card feeding that bottomless pit.”

“ _Rao’s shadow_ ,” Kara grumbles. “Winn! I told you to tell me when I was being a bad friend.”

“What fresh cultural context is this?” Nadia demands.  “Was that an alien curse word?”

“Kryptonese.  Teach you.”

“Kolex, get Winn some money.”

“Understood. Total?”

“Ha!” Nadia exclaims. “I told you that tattoo talked. You were all ‘Nadia’s seeing things! Can’t trust a word she says.’ and my girls tattoo is fully glowing and talking.”

Kolex projects a small blue sphere which flickers like a sine wave when he talks.

“And shooting lasers through her clothes,” Nadia mumbles. “Hi there.”

“My projection is not laser-based. It is harmless, I assure you. I am Kolex. Nice to meet you properly, Lady Nadia.”

“Lady?”

“You are associated with Lady Kara of House El in an emotional arrangement analogous to early Kryptonian marriage custom. Therefore _you_ are a Lady of House of El by common law.”

“Uh,” Winn mumbles. “So, yeah. The tattoo talks. Supercomputer. Cameras. The usual.”

“Cameras?” Nadia snaps, glaring at the projected sphere.

“Lady Kara’s control over my access to her surroundings is complete. If at any time she asks me to, I cease all recording and I merely monitor her vital signs. I must confess, Nadia, I know you more as numbers than as a person. Heart-rate, respiration, hormone levels, sleep quality. She almost always in privacy mode with you. I have only nine minutes of face-to-face footage of you. Including this.”

Nadia swallows her next question.  She has spent more than nine minutes around Kara since the night they met.  She thinks she remembers spending nine minutes in one go screaming her lungs out while impaled on Kara’s hand.

“Keeping you to myself,” Kara explains, eyelids drooping.

“Greg, tell me how much I owe your dumb boyfriend so my robot can focus on making my girlfriend say more smart things in her voice,” Kara whines. “S’cute. Her voice s’nice and m’sleepy.”

Greg sighs.

“The card is maxed and the limit is $1500.”

“All of it, Kolex.”

“Sent,” Kolex replies.

“So, did he just...make money?” Nadia asks.

“I did not. I have access to a small sum of money for electronic investing purposes and based on Lady Kara’s guidelines, I have being researching something called Bitcoin.”

“Hoo boy,” Winn mumbles. “There goes the market, here comes the barter system.”

Nadia’s brow wrinkles even when half-unconscious, Kara pulls her up to kiss it.

“That’s that anarchist currency right, where you mine with a computer or something and then it’s all digital?”

“Correct, Lady Nadia. Cryptocurrency. As I am the second-most powerful computing network on this planet, I have a distinct edge. Lady Kara, I would like to focus on this funding source.”

“Do it,” Kara groans, shifting to get comfortable. “Your reports on the stock market always make my brain hurt. Do the crypto-thingy, seventy-thirty split favoring accumulation. Sell the stocks and just maybe email me if the stock market catches fire? So I don’t look stupid when someone asks.”

“Done. Traditional investments will sell once profitable. Algorithm tuned for short-term reward and offloaded to background processors. Cryptographic investments prioritized. Desired yield per day?”

Winn is frantically shaking his head and mouthing ‘please no’, presumably hoping Kolex won’t torpedo his own scheme.

“Which is the most powerful?” Nadia asks. “I mean, aren’t you a sci-fi supergizmo?”

“There is currently an AI of immense scale on this planet but it is in hibernation mode. Its power is such that I can detect it by the disruption it causes in nearby systems. Since it has not made itself known, I can only surmise it is inactive at this time. But I _am_ active and I am many times more powerful than this ‘internet’ you have.”

“But no cat videos on you,” Winn reminds Kolex. “Shameful.”

Kara groans, rubbing her forehead.

“Ugh. Godsphere tech lying around...sounds like something my father would play with when he was told not to. Kolex, make a note.”

“Quote. To me: Hi, me! Did you remember to find the _talaq-_ fucking Apokoliptan supercomputer yet? No? So go try again before some supervillian gets their mitts on it. Thanks, me!  End quote. Set to remind daily.”

“Set.”

“Nadia,” Kara yawns. “I am so in love with you but I am also so tired. I think I broke my brain.”

“That’s what happens when you break the speed of light!” Winn teases in sing-song.

“Can you make Winn’s flat thing bring us food in like ten hours? And can you stay in my room with me...sleep with me?  Just sleep?”

“Yeah,” Nadia replies. “I can do that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (If you you think I've ripped of the Thessalians from Mass Effect's Asari, you're damned right. Mass Effect 3 taught us that any story needs one flirty & sassy Asari and one shy one.)  
> (The Rakni-Xinda are mine too, and apparently just adorable if you get them as pups. I used the "Hunters" from Halo, the G'oauld from Stargate and the Species 8472 from Star Trek Voyager when I was spitballing them.  
> (Coluans, Daxamites, Kryptonians, Helgrammites and K'Hund are all DC Comics, CW or Supergirl creations.)  
> 


	8. Secrets, Lies, Cruelty...Compassion, Honesty, Polyamory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON CRASHING TO EARTH:  
> Where Kara and Nadia take Winn to brunch with Alex, a wild Vasquez appears with her better half, Emilia's new baes need help from the Black Knight, Kara calls in a favor from the Bat-family, Lena knows that the keyboard is mightier than the scalpel, Emilia plays for time, Lillian is the worst and Lex doesn't see it, Kara shops and drives while black, Nadia gets spooked and someone makes her cry and the Black Knight has a message for National City. BONUS: a pleasant visit from a surprise guest!
> 
> NEXT EXCITING EPISODE:  
> Where we get a sexed-up vignette with some new characters getting some fun in while the plot is safely stowed away.

* * *

**March 13, 2006  | Nadia Talbert** **  
** National City  
Noonan’s Cafe

 

Kara is hunched over her cell phone, blinking back tears.  Twenty texts from Emilia’s phone that she didn’t see while she was busy playing around in space. 

Even in that flash of rage, Kara she could not bring herself to remove her number from Emilia’s contacts.  Instead she changed her number to ‘In Case of Emergency’ so that there would always be someone to call for a woman who cannot reach out to the police or the hospitals.  Apparently when Emilia went missing, her current partners picked up her phone and tried to do exactly that, only to find Kara out of contact.

The most recent text reads ‘Coming to you.  Leave phone on. You owe our family.’ and it terrifies Kara.  

Not only did Emilia find someone but they see like her family and now...she’s gone.  

Never came home from a shopping trip that she and Kara made together half a dozen times.  A trip Kara would have gladly backed her up on any time she felt nervous making it, even now.

Kara knew that Jok’ak -- her white sand dealer -- had nothing to do with the abduction by the time her feet hit the floor of his apartment along with the debris from the hole she made in his roof.  He threw himself at her feet, eyes squeezed shut and palms on the floor. 

He was so scared of her it flashed Kara back to the Worldkiller memories she received from the files her father left.

Emilia was not especially careful around strangers but she didn’t need to be.  She could feed a mugger his own bullets on a gravity slingshot or rip an attacker's crotch apart at an atomic level.  W hoever took her waited until after she got the shipment and left almost all of it behind.  Meaning she was fed and at full strength and they didn't want the sand. This was someone new and they wanted her healthy, which is terrifying.  

“Four days, she’s been missing for four days.  First time I fail someone as Black Knight and it’s my ex-girlfriend and she’s dead.“

Nadia rubs Kara’s back, trying to think of what to say.  Rather than saying any of the idiotic or jealous or mean things she’s thinking of, she puts her cheek on Kara’s shoulder-blades.  She reaches around and Kara nuzzles into her open palm. 

“There is nothing in the girlfriend handbook about this,” Kara reminds Nadia.  “You’re allowed not to like Emilia.”

“Oh hush,” Nadia replies, letting the tense sinew of Kara’s back press into her cheek and pushing fresh tears aside with her thumb.  “I’m just floored. You were mad as hell, you dumped without letting her apologize or explain herself...and then you basically promised to be there if she ever needed you?”

“She was a good person.  She deserved to be safe. Didn’t do her any good,” Kara sobs.

“Kara...she is alive somewhere and deep down, you know it.  You will save her. You are a badass. You told me this morning that you  _ punched  _ an  _ asteroid  _ into a bigger  _ asteroid _ until it made a _ black hole  _ because you were  _ hungry _ .  You are going to do this, you hear me?”

“Teensy one.  Only lasted four nanoseconds,” Kara mumbles.

“Kara!  Listen to yourself!”  Nadia snaps. “You’re spiraling.  You need to not do that.”

“There is quite literally no one stronger for Emilia to have in her corner.  So woman up. Believe that you are going to do this and go do it. We will find her and you are going to ride to her rescue.  You will come astride a pale horse and the wicked will look upon you and be afraid.”

Kara gulps in a breath and eases up slightly.

“I just turned into my mother, didn’t I?” Nadia asks either Kara or herself.  “I didn’t mean to say it that way, my brain just did.”

“Give a pseudo-Biblical pep talk?   You did, Nads, and it worked I feel a little bit better.”

Nadia smiles and hopes Kara can feel it on the skin of her back.

“I try and I try and I try...and still happens.  Think they have pills for it?”

“For being smart and wanting to help people and remembering lots of stories you memorized when you were small?  Well, smaller anyway.”

Nadia pinches Kara’s thigh.

“Don’t think that smart is treatable, sorry.  I know your mom is stupid intense sometimes, Nads, but as preachers go a gay girl could do a lot worse for a pastor and besides she’s your mom.  She has to love you. It’s a rule.”

“Where’s that rule?” Nadia asks.  “I know plenty of moms who break it.”

“Eliza said it.  So it is a rule of Earth momming...I have a list.  What was it? Your mom stopped speaking to you forever and cracked after two weeks?  Your best friend, thanks for making me referee that argument, by the way,” Kara grumps.  “Says that Leviticus has not been spoken of since at her pulpit. Like, any of it. Doesn’t she push Ruth 1-15 and 16 at every engaged couple she meets?”

Nadia sighs.

“Yes and makes sure to tell me.  She’s really angling to do my wedding.”

The waitress taps a fork against the other side of the table.

“You need to leave soon, sweetie.  Sweeties. We’re closing in ten minutes for a private event.”

Kara slides her ID out on the table.

“Danvers or maybe just Alex?  If that’s it, it’s my sister. She rented out the place?” Kara scoffs, looking around at the tables and counter and the brownie rack the red chair for reading the used romance novels.  Hardly a threatening location.

“That seems a bit much.”

“No, honey,” the waitress sneers,  “what’s a bit much was the FBI agent who gave me a phone interview before I could come in for my shift.  Your sister has some nerve.”

Josie nearly always gets their table and her Tennessee drawl is usually honeyed, not acidic.  Alex might want to make an apology lest some boiling beverage be ‘spilled’.

“Yeah,” Kara snorts, “classic Alex.”

Nadia takes a fifty from Kara’s billfold and hands it to the server. 

“Her big sis takes the overprotective bit really seriously.  FBI agent. She made Kara take tactical driving classes before she got her license,” Nadia whispers.

The waitress puts her hand on her hip.  “Aw honey, now I feel bad. Glad that ain’t my sister,” she mutters.  “I’ll get y’all some more coffee then.”

“Thanks, Josie.  You’re good people.  The best in fact.”

“I am, aren’t I?  Humble, too.”

Kara waits for Josie to disappear into the tiny bakery slash kitchen in back.

“Solid bluff, Nads.”

“See?  I’m getting it!”

Nadia’s phone lights up and says ‘Sweater Vest’ over and over in a computerized voice.  She lifts it for a moment. 

“Winn and Greg will be here in five minutes, right aft-” 

Nadia is interrupted by the ring of the bell over the door.

“Kara!” Alex calls out.

“Alex,” Kara croaks, reaching out for a hug.

Alex sweeps pasts Nadia, a blur of leather jacket and gasoline-scented denim.  Something smacks Nadia in the side of the head and in the corner of her eye, Nadia can see a holstered gun and instinct kicks in:  white woman, gun, law enforcement, danger. Then Alex kisses Kara’s forehead and whispers a thank you to Nadia in what sounds like Kryptonese.  The tension doesn't go away but it dies back faster than it has in Nadia’s entire life. 

Nadia starts to pull back and Alex shakes her head, adjusting the hug to bring her inside as well.

“She’s hurt and it’s because I dumped her and I only dumped her because I was mad and I was only mad because she didn’t know I was Kryptonian and so she thought Daxamite was a complement an-”

“Shh, shh, shh.  Hey. It’s all right.  We’ll get her back.”

“Guessing you know?” Alex asks Nadia.  “Course you do. She’s been dating you and can’t lie to save her life.  How’d you find out?”

“Rescue mission.  Just last night.”

“Really?” Alex deadpans.  “Seems unlikely that she needs rescue.”

_ She didn’t threaten to kill me like she does Winn every other time she sees him,  _ Nadia observes.   _ Maybe she’s mellowing out? _

“Alex?  I, um, found out some nasty shit about what happened to me in my pod during my missing time.  Needed some answers about what it meant. I went on a trip to space Alex! And it was mostly awesome except for like five minutes where I thought I was going to die and fall into the sun and I fixed that but then I had to wait and cool off before I could land.”

Nadia watches Alex as two dark red eyebrows arch so high it’s like they’re trying to escape into her hair.  She decides to pre-empt whatever Alex was going to ask.

“All true, Alex.  Winn and Greg were there and it was a good thing because without three of us we never would have gotten her up the stairs into bed.  She was exhausted.”

Alex takes the chair on the other side of Kara and listens as Kara recounts the story of her three days in space, discovering her new powers and tiptoes around fixing her and Nadia’s relationship wrinkle...in the least exciting way possible.

“Oh boy,” Alex jokes.  “You were not excited about that story and I’m pretty sure it was exciting.  We need to hear that story  _ again  _ when Emilia’s safe.  I’ll bring popcorn.”

Winn and Greg swing in beside Nadia not long after, followed to the table by Josie who takes their orders and disappears.  She’s staying in the kitchen with music turned up, probably as part of whatever arrangement there was. 

The bell on the door jingles again and in strolls a short woman with cinnamon brown skin and muscle definition like Kara’s and a gelled, spiky haircut. 

Beside her--guided by a hand on the small of the back--towers a slender female creature which appears to have escaped the Louvre’s sculpture gardens.  If the milky skin, glass-cutting jawline and hand-spun red hair weren’t clues enough, she is wearing a slouchy dress that seems to be little more than a fancy linen shawl and hiding her face with a straw hat and massive turtle-shell sunglasses.  She removes her shades and folds them with three nimble flicks of her long fingers before tucking them into the collar of her dress. 

The dark skinned woman beside her isn’t sneering or bragging or anything but with a creature like that beside her it’s completely unnecessary.

Kara stands up to greet them, dumping an unprepared Nadia into the chair she vacated.

“I’m Kara.  Nice to meet you in person, Susan.  Alex told me good things.”

“Ugh.  Please, no.  Vasquez or Suz, if you really have to.”

“Suz it is,” Kara decides.  

For a moment Nadia worries that Kara and Vasquez are going to get into some kind of masculine-of-center pissing contest but they don’t.  It wouldn’t last long. Pound for pound they’re equally fierce but Vasquez is no taller than Nadia herself and Kara has at least fifteen more inches of muscle and glimmering braids to work with.

“Clarice,” the mystery masterpiece tells Kara, hand outstretched.

Kara lifts Clarice’s hand, waits and after getting a small nod, kisses it.  

“Charmed.  We were just about to order.”

She turns back towards the table and looks at Nadia, makes a ‘wow’ shape with her mouth and blows a kiss that no one but Nadia could possibly see.  The jealousy Nadia feels bubbling under her skin alchemizes the instant Kara does this, turning into something far more delicious and dangerous that she will have to purge herself of the moment she can get Kara alone.

Clarice settles in beside Vasquez and Greg and Winn grab nearby chairs and bring them to the table, purposely keeping themselves at the edges.  Kara is nestled between Nadia and Alex.

“Before anyone says anything else, is everyone here read in?” Alex asks.

Vasquez, Clarice and Kara immediately nod.  Winn soon follows. Greg tilts his head sideways like the stoner version of a golden retriever.  Everyone seems to be looking at her.

_ Read in?  What sort of white people corporate-speak nonsense is that? _

“What does that mean?” Nadia finally asks.

“It means going through the correct process for acquiring top-secret information,” Alex replies.  “Which includes rules about when and where you may listen to, or speak about it and with whom. Apparently you and Greg have not been read in.”

Alex opens the satchel beside her and pulls out three fat stacks of paper, handing one to Kara, one to Greg and one to Nadia.

“Read in, like brought in the room while something secret was read,” Nadia thinks out loud.  “It’s clunky. You really should call it dealt in, like poker. Dealing in stakeholders. That I would have gotten right away.”

Alex looks at Nadia.  She then turns and whispers something to Vasquez, who merely rolls her eyes behind her sunglasses.

“That one is smart, Danvers.  You should put your recruiting cap on.”

“That’ll be a hard no,” Nadia replies before Alex can start.  “Maybe you’re soldiers and you have a code of honor and high ideals and you live that shit or maybe you’re the nicest cops ever...but you are still armed people dealing with a vulnerable community from a position of power.  Not how I want to spend my life.”

Alex raises a finger as if to lecture Nadia then quickly drops it and closes her mouth.  Kara snickers. Winn’s mind is clearly blown by Alex backing down and Greg is too lost reading his packet to react.

“Can I steal her?” Clarice asks.  “What? It’s a small school. I need a civics teacher.”

“Tell me what it says,” Nadia tells Alex, pushing the paper back across.  “Once you do that, I’ll read it and see if you’re lying.”

“Your last girlfriend was not this blunt,” Alex complains to her sister.  “Or suspicious.”

“She didn’t take things seriously either.  So point Nadia on that one.”

“Won’t argue with that.  Can’t have my baby sister dating some slacker,” Alex chuckles.  

“These agreements say three things:  that you acknowledge first hand knowledge of the existence of alien life on Earth, that you stipulate you have done nothing to or on behalf of an alien that would constitute a violent crime if done to a human being and that you will keep the existence of our project secret until and unless you are told otherwise.”

“Both Greg’s and Kara’s include business contracts.”

Nadia looks up from the first page of her agreement.

“Not mine?”

“I think that is called prostitution,” Alex replies.  “If you were profiting from aliens while having sex with one.”

“I-she loves me!” Nadia begins, struggling for the right words.  “Just knowing she’s an alien?” she sputters. “That’s not how it would be…”

“You’re jerking me around!” she realizes.  “That can’t possibly be a real thing that lawyers told you to say.”

Alex smiles into the rim of her coffee.

“No, it wasn’t.  But you’re corrupting my baby sister’s innocence.  I can’t stop you, she’s a big girl...I’m certainly not going to pay you for the privilege.”

Kara is flipping through hers in a blur of paper.

“Looks legit.  You typoed three things on page thirty-eight, nine and page forty.  A space, a semicolon and the word Krypton, which...I’m hurt. It’s on the periodic table, Alex!  Even if you don’t love your sister any more,” Kara moans, lip quivering.

Alex’s face looks like someone just stabbed her in the heart with a rusty spoon and then ripped the whole thing out.

“Easy to spell-check,” she teases, dropping the act.  “Want me to read yours, Nads? If you trust me,” Kara adds.

“On this and anything else,” she replies, pushing her contract over.

Alex throws her hands up.

“Go to brunch with Kara and her friends, they said!  Get everyone on the same page, they said! Bond with the girlfriend, they said!  Do I have a mock me sign on my back, Vasquez?”

Vasquez leans over.

“No.  You’re clear.”

Greg raises his hand.

“Um, Alex? This is a lot of money.”

She shrugs.

“We have unassigned funds.  Let’s just say I saved us on our used spaceship budget.  You can take that to the venture capitalists and get started with your pickup line app or whatever that is.”

“What’s the catch?” Greg asks.

“The catch is if I ever find you said anything about Kara in public that included a word that starts with A, a whistleblower will get a phone call from me.  They will report that your company was founded on stolen government money and you’ll be unable to prove to Congress that it wasn’t.”

“She’s awesome,” Winn points out.  “Altruistic, too. Amusing, uh, let’s see...I’m not going to speak out of turn but I imagine Nadia would use the world animalistic?”

At long last Alex starts laughing along.

“Fine!  You know what I mean though, right Greg?”

Greg nods, pen in hand.  He signs his name and hands it back to Alex.

“Done.  And it is not a pickup-line app,” he whines.  “It’s a conversation starter.”

Nadia wiggles her phone.

“It’s actually kind of fun.  It’s called Flattyr and it compares photos to famous art and makes a photo of you as the painting.  Clarice, can I take a picture of you over by the bookcase there?”

“Sure.”

Clarice follows Nadia over where she proceeds to throw one of the blankets over a bookshelf and move a stack of Harlequins aside.

“Stand here.  One hand in your lap, right about there.  Palm towards me. Yup. Good. Now, tilt your head to the left.  Exactly. Hair down. Shake it a little. Rawr! The camera loves you,” Nadia teases.

“Hold it...there.  Come on back.”

She walks back to the table followed by a very baffled Clarice and her very frisky scarlet mane.  Nadia chews her lip and concentrates on her work.

“Jaw is here.  Hands here and here.  Eyes there. Knee here.  Greg, where’s the advanced filter button?  I have a painting in mind.”

“Uh, upper left on the current build.”

“Ah.  Thanks.  Got it.”

“Ta-da!”

She holds her phone out to Clarice.  

On the screen is a retelling of  _ Birth of Venus  _ with Clarice as the goddess of beauty, rising lazily from the waters, skin incandescent and hair rippling behind her as the zephyrs and nymphs alike fawn over.  

In this version, a used armchair stands in for a clamshell and a well-loved afghan blanket replaces the servant hurrying over to cover the goddess up.  Whatever geekery Greg set up behind the scenes preserved the frigid blue of Clarice’s eyes, the shine of her hair, the downward slope of her shoulder and and the sharp lines of her face even while it made some educated guesses as to how Boticelli would have rendered her bare skin.

_ “Venus at Coffee, _ I’ll call it. _ ”  _

“M-m-me?  That’s me?” Clarice whispers.  She turns the photo to Vasquez, eyes watery.

“Beauty on the halfshell,” Vasquez agrees, pressing a kiss to Clarice’s shoulder.  “Neat trick.”

“I mean, I sort of had the thought when you walked in,” Nadia admits.  “This woman looks like someone people would paint!”

“May I?” Greg asks.  He leans over Clarice’s shoulder before getting an okay but Vasquez or Clarice don’t seem especially bothered.  He tends to come across so eager and nerdy that his rudeness is more tolerable. 

“This is way better than our usual result, Nadia.  Our testers get something this good one time in twenty, tops.  How’d you do it?”

Nadia steals one of Kara’s cookies and gets a look that probably  _ could  _ burn her alive.  Too bad she’s too cute to kill.  She shrugs.

“Dude.  I’m charming," Nadia scoffs.  "I worked with the model. Have you tried having like, boyfriends do it for their girlfriends and so on?  Someone who admires the subject? I have one of Kara as basically every black woman ever painted respectfully by white men.  So like, I have five. You need to get your shit together for non-Western art styles, by the way.”

Greg looks back to the phone.

“We just hired someone for that.   We haven’t done enough couples testing, clearly.  This is...wow. This belongs in our hall of fame.”

He pulls out his own phone and taps something.

“Cha-ching.  You now have store credit for prints and framed copies.  Amazing work, Nadia.”

“Thanks.  How did you two meet, anyway?” she asks,  waving a chocolate-dipped biscotti between Vasquez and Clarice.

“I’m her ex-wife,” Clarice explains. 

Apparently, that was not what anyone but Vasquez was expecting to hear.  Not even Alex took that in stride.

“That Clarice, huh?” Alex teases.

Vasquez blushes.

“I need to hear how this happened!” Kara squeals.

“Vegas.  Got separated from a bachelorette party, wandering drunk in the hotel hallway, walk in to what I assumed was a brick wall.  A short wall,” Clarice teases.

“Said brick wall looks up at me and says something about how beautiful I am, using words which I will not repeat here.  I’d never been with a woman but something made me curious. Long story short, we talked, we kissed, we had a lot of fun, we sobered up, we had way too much fun, I limp up to the altar and Elvis pronounces us schoolteacher and soldier.”

Nadia licks her fingers clean.

“So you’ve left the Army then?  Because I hate to break it to you, Vasquez but this isn’t an ‘ex’ anything and your hand on her back may not be telling but her eyes are definitely asking.  Even the straights would catch it. Is it an exception or something? You must be this tall to ride this coaster and this gay to hunt aliens?”

Vasquez chokes on her tea.  Alex looks at her sputtering friend and giggles, girlish and high and sounding ridiculous.  It startles Nadia so much that she worries...does Alex not get to laugh?

“It’s...a risk we’re taking. Top secret,” Vasquez teases.  “But no, I’m still in the service and tragically for dykes on bikes everywhere, Alex is not gay.  I suppose the Honda might be.”

“Ducati,” Alex growls.

“My mistake.  Easy, easy. See, Nadia?  Like I said, tragic. Anyway.  Me and Clarice had to break up when real life found us but we’re were friends after and then a couple days ago, the base needed someone for the elementary school.  I knew a teacher.”

“Top secret, right.  So. Schoolteacher. That’s some real shit, Clarice,” Nadia says, suddenly much more quiet and soft than before.  “That’s how the world gets saved, you know?”

Clarice nods.  Her face is lit up with the mention of kids or teaching or something adorable that some small, sticky-fingered monster said to her.

“Just between us…who’s your cutest student?  Who’s your best student? Who are you proudest of how hard they’re trying?” Nadia demands, leaning low over the table like she wants to pounce on the answers when they appear.

“That,” Clarice replies icily.  “Would violate my student’s academic privacy and unlike the military, we take that kind of thing seriously.  I have students aged two through fourteen and the school is three rooms located on base. Next.”

They sit and talk and needle and tease for  _ hours  _ and no one scares another word of information out of Clarice even as Alex and Vasquez each tell a dozen half-redacted stories of hand-to-hand takedowns and stun-gun misunderstandings and rampaging alien pets.

Greg and Winn drift off around lunch and the sun is low when four figures appear and a man knock on the locked door.  Alex and Vasquez both tense up.

“Reynolds?” Alex asks some hidden radio.

“They’re here to talk to your sister.”

“It’s Emilia’s friends,” Kara explains, going over to let them in.  “Out of towners who can’t blend in like me…and they just lost someone they love.  So be nice.”

Two men and a woman follow her back to the table, two of them wearing baggy trench coats and bowler hats as if it wasn’t the most obvious disguise ever. 

“This is Nakka,” she tells everybody, doing her best game-show hostess impression while introducing a svelte woman hidden in a baggy trench coat.

“Tam,” she shows off a tall, broad-shouldered man loosely wrapped in in what must be the largest commercially available trench coat.

Kara snaps her fingers, trying to get the name and smiling at a well dressed man with immaculate hands and rimmed glasses.

“Kyn.”

“Thank you!  This is Kyn. They are Emilia’s new--” Kara stumbles.  “Lovers?”

“She did say something about wanting to spend her life having our adorable parasite babies, so I think there might be love,” Nakka agrees.

Kyn is wearing a teal silk shirt, immaculately pressed slacks and a white blazer in what might as well be a ‘gay art dealer’ cosplay and his skin seems more metallic than it is merely pale but nothing jumps out.  

Which must be why he got to skip the trench coat.

When Nakka crooks her finger at Josie to whisper her order, Nadia sees a flicker of static and a glimpse of claws and a four-fingered right hand.  Peeking through the collar of the trenchcoat, she sees another right hand inside the coat, this one with unpainted skin so yellow that it stands out even in the shadow.

“...and two wing baskets.  Got it, darling. I’ll just go pass these through the window.  I’m off in thirty so I’ll get all your food to you then I’m going to split.”

“Sounds good,” Alex replies, slides a black credit card across the table.  “All on this. And thank you. I know this was difficult.”

Josie reads back the horrifyingly meaty order and heads back to the kitchen.  Either Josie didn’t notice the weirdness or hear Kara’s rambling about black holes or she is going for the Nobel Prize in Waitressing because she did not so much as blink.

“This is a coffee shop,” Alex says, glaring at Kara.  “Why, pray thee tell, do they serve burgers and roasted chicken and endless pasta bowls?”

Kara slides down in her seat.

“Because I told them that there’s a pub next door with great food and they could have like a little window where they passed orders and money through?  Then I helped them install said window, put in a cash box and printed said menus,” she admits.

Alex snorts.

“At least you followed through.”

Alex leans forward and pulls a badge out of her pocket.  It reads ‘DEO Field Operative’ in big letters at the top and has the words US Army at the bottom next to Alex’s name.

“I want to help you find Emilia and I know Kara does.  Let me help, please. I understand that I’m government and so you might not trust me,” Alex sighs.

“Why not?” Nakka demands.  “Did you hurt our Emilia?”

“No.”

“So your only problem is that your human and you think I have a problem with that?  Nah. I mean, not everybody can be an smoking hot alien monster,” Nakka sniffs, lifting her chin.  “As for being with the government? Pobody’s nerfect.”

Alex blinks.  Vasquez grins.  Clarice laughs like a wind chime…Kara guffaws like a madwoman.  

“We will get her back for you,” Kara says, her fists clenched tight.  The mention of Emilia makes her leg bounce and the floor creaks under it.

Nakka nods her thanks, reaching in to her coat pocket.

“If you need her genetics, this should have it.  It was still in its case that morning and the cleaning cycle was late....I don’t think she used it.  But the stasis field means there would be skin cells, live ones. Possibly blood.” 

Alex’s jaw drops.

“Is that a...Thessalian Mitosis Inhibitor?” she mumbles, awed.  “I’ve heard about these.”

“If I told you it’s the fabled Key to the the Vanishing Gate, you’d believe me, wouldn’t you?” Nakka teases.

“What’s that?” Nadia asks Kara.

“That,” Kara points at the device in Nakka’s hand.  “Is a contraceptive for Emilia’s species. Ironically enough called a TMI.  It sends an electrical pulse up the lady parts and prevents the body from starting to split off a new clone of itself.  Alex is an alien biology nerd. She did college two years early, med school and then went into the Army instead of residency.  I think she wants to be the first human doctor for aliens.”

“I actually did a bullet removal on a teenager the other week,” Alex mumbles, not turning from whatever she was looking at with Nakka.  “Thessalian. Smart ass but she’s doing well.”

Nadia whistles.

“She really is a nerd, she rattled that off but is not paying  _ any attention  _ to us.  So what’s a Vanishing Gate?”

“A part of space that leads to a very bad place with very bad aliens ruling it.  There was a huge explosion billions of years ago just to seal it up, messed up the whole area.  Planets just fall apart all of a sudden, stars go cold too quickly.”

“Stuff that  _ can  _ happen but shouldn’t happen that often and definitely shouldn't happen all in the same place at the same time.  The place is just wrong.”

“My aunt did a patrol guarding the outer edge.  Every race’s navy takes a turn watching it. It was the only time where she left I was afraid she wouldn’t come back.”

Nadia mimes scratching something out.

“So...something there requires my girl’s favorite aunt to keep inside.  Taking it off the vacation board then.”

“I’m going to make a phone call,” Kara decides.  She pushes her chair back.

“Call in a Batfavor.”

  
  


* * *

 

**March 13, 2006  | Lena Luthor**

Private Office, LuthorCorp Mineral Facility   
Euro-Asian Landmass

 

Fingers trembling on the inside doorknob, Lena shudders out a breath.  No matter how disgraceful it is for a Luthor to seek help, she knows that Lex will keep their mother distracted for her.  He’s been doing it for six years now.

“I am not my mother.  I am not Lex. I am myself.  I am the leader of my life,” she repeats to herself.

She reaches into her pocket for her cell phone and dials.

“Doctor Hamilton?  Sorry to do this session by phone.”

“Lena, with you I’m glad when it sounds like you’ve slept and eaten.”

Lena scoffs.

“Eating is the only thing I do right now that isn’t evil.”

“It might feel evil, to you.  It may not seem that way to others.  If any of what you’ve told me in my office is true, there will be some who see it as heroic.”

Lena inhales sharply.

“Yes.  You’re right.  I seem to forget that.”

The doctors mellow, grandmotherly voice centers Lena even as the sterile concrete floor and vague whiff of antiseptic remind her where she is: a butcher's shop of her mother and brother’s making.

“You don’t forget it, Lena.  You’re afraid. Your mother is your abuser and one of your triggers, as we’ve discussed.  Your brother…” the doctor pauses. 

“Lex complicated for you.  Based on my work for your family I would say he’s egotistical, unpredictable, highly motivated, and sub-diagnosably manic at times but that is what the public and his employees experience.  I’ve never seen any indication that his presence is harmful for you. He’s not a trigger but he may be in a sense a secondary trigger in that you relax around him. That’s normal and healthy for siblings.  Except when mother is present and takes advantage. Your good mood means she too has more access to that vulnerability you have. Vulnerability you need to allow yourself, might I add.”

“So why do I feel like I’m slipping, doctor?  Becoming him...or worse, my mother?”

Doctor Hamilton sighs.

“Again, you’re more relaxed.   Lex doesn’t judge you or mock your ideas like some men in STEM would mock a female colleague.  At least from what I hear from you. So you suggest something ‘crazy’ to him...”

In her head, Lena can see the good doctor’s hands making air quotes around crazy.

“...and he asks you to tell him more and you’re deeper in the idea.  Lena, your intelligence and drive means your ideas are rough, or incomplete, or ambitious.  Perhaps you are missing some safety steps. Perhaps there are legislative hurdles. And yes, some of the ones you’ve shared scare me.  But with him you feel free to discuss. What happens is that you worry that the being excited by the freedom to discuss it means you would be excited to do it.”

“I suppose I do get carried away,” Lena sighs.  “Speaking of, I only have twenty five more minutes before my own appointment.  Can I ask you some questions about my work? I need a...medical ethics compass from someone not tied to my family.”

“If I can answer, I will.”

 

Lena steps out of the office with a stiff-necked nod to her brother and he responds with a grin that Lillian would chastise even her golden boy for.  The mask falls over her face moments before her mother opens the door.

“Lena.  So glad you could join us at work,” Lillian drones.  “We have two K’Hunds to dissect--twins--and one Helgrammite I finished up. I am euthanizing that thing later today.”

“I’m not a doctor, mother.  I’m an engineer.”

_ Twin studies?  Finished up? That thing?  Is she listening to herself?   _

“Your office wall claims otherwise.  What is doctoring but engineering with a knife instead of a wrench?  Specialties are for more limited minds than ours, foster daughter. I’m sure Lex can fritter away his man hours putting you to use somewhere.”

Lillian leaves without a word, without asking either of her children how they feel about the fact that she is killing a living creature because its injuries from her scalpel mean it is too damaged to be of further use.

“What are we doing here, Lex?  I’ve counted twelve death-penalty offenses since I started.”

“Saving the world, Lenny, saving the world.  Trying to keep our sanity while doing it.”

“You seem less than thrilled by that.”

“Mother’s methods are wasteful.  Her approach is overeager, sloppy, and dare I say cold-hearted,” he says with a shrug.

“Like she is?”

Lena is rewarded with a booming laugh.

“Yes, I suppose that explains it.”

Lex leans against the table, big hands folded over the front of his slacks, shirtsleeves up and a smirk none of his bed-warmers have ever seen.  Only his ‘favorite sister’ sees him this genuine, he assures her and she believes it. It would be hard for genuine emotion to exist in more than one place for either of them without Lillian detecting it.

“How would you do it, Lex?” she asks.  “Perfect world…snap your fingers. What is your ideal way of taking the tools we need to be equals with the aliens?”

“Isn’t it obvious?  Buy low, sell high, fake the check,” he jokes.  “I don’t think we can trust sales or handouts. If they have a reason to hide or hold back or squirrel things away in the ice, that gives them the chance.  We take it.”

She knows the wisecrack about the ice is all about Superman...it has nothing to do with humanity or its future or LuthorCorp’s bottom line.  That universe revolves only around Lex’s feelings towards his former best friend.

Lex sighs.

“Kill one of each kind, tear down one of each ship, learn everything about them.  Use it, better the human race. Take my soul with me and have the knowledge that I did as little violence as I could to get as much as I could.  You?”

_ A businessman’s approach to mortal sin,  _ Lena supposes.  

“Make them  _ want  _ to share it all.  Earn their trust. Trust but verify.”

Lex holds up a finger and taps her nose.  Grinning.

“You, my sweet sister, are ambitious.  More than I’m willing to be. I have faith that the golden cities of the future will have a statue of you.”

“Unlikely,” she scoffs.

Faith?  Lena has no faith left in God.  Lillian took that when a child’s pleas to make the pain stop went unanswered.  Yet it religion touches her somehow. She still hears Latin when she closes her eyes, still feels her mother bouncing her on her knees while praying the rosary.  Sometimes at night she has dreams of a green-eyed woman looking down tearfully at what must be an infant Lena over the curve of her own breast, praying over her in Gaelic.  A partial memory turned dream, or so Lena hopes. Hope that once upon a time, someone may have looked at her as a mother and done so with unalloyed joy.

Perhaps four years with a poor Irishwoman -- an office temp Lionel fucked once -- a woman whose name she has not been able to find, left enough scraps of humanity on Lena to save her.  

She can hope.

“This is exciting,” Lex begins.  “Lenny, I have someone for you to meet.  Remember that time when you were all over the moon about quantum entanglement?  Someone I need you to meet...just got her in yesterday.”

“I was thirteen, Lex.  Pimples and French braids and…” she shudders.  “Stretch marks. I mistook soulmates for science.  It sounded romantic.”

“Nonsense.  Your mother gave you many gifts, Lena and that snowy skin of yours is highest among them.  Besides, you knew it was actual science. Actual theory.”

He leads her into a cell in the facility she has never seen before.  Huge metal shackles hang on the wall and a figure can be seen in the dark.  Asleep or perhaps merely exhausted. Head hung and limbs slack in the restraints.

“Lets see,” he mutters, grabbing the chart.  

“Emilia, according to her fake ID.  Real feisty. Put down three of our men.  Snapped their necks without even getting close.  X-rays suggest their spines  _ imploded _ .  Even after getting hit with four cattle prods and a 50ccs of fentanyl, she tackled Mercy to the ground.  Nearly killed her with some kind of ultrasonic attack. Microfractures in both body armor and ribs.. Otis pulled one of his hostage taker ‘I have a bomb’ bluffs and she came willingly at that point.”

“My foolish, foolish Otis,” Lex sighs.  “Whatever will happen when you try to bluff someone with something resembling a spine?”

_ Far more dangerous than our usual prisoner.  Is he putting me here to get me killed?  _ She wonders.   _ Does he know?   _

She decides that if Lex wanted her dead he would probably have Mercy do it.  Poison. No doubt in a closet after a re-enactment of one of Lena’s more questionable teenage escapades with one of their household maids.  Something sweet to keep the lamb calm and take the sting of the knife away.

“Where did you find her?” Lena asks.

“Buying something called ‘White Sand’ off the docks in San Diego.  Intercepted a text from her dealer. Fuel of some kind. That’s my guess.  Sets off a geiger counter and each pellet is wrapped in a shell we haven’t cracked yet.  We kept one canister and left the others. She was buying over seven tons of it.”

“Ta-da!” he declares, throwing a switch right out of a 1930s rendition of Frankenstein.  

When she sees the size of the circuits involved, the oversized device makes more sense.

The lights come on with a zapping sound, accompanied by the hum and ozone whiff of raw amps being poured into the electromagnets.  A woman with robins’ egg blue skin hangs from the shackles, naked, blindfolded and wriggling against the large and apparently electromagnetically bottled shackles.  She is surrounded by the shattered, warped and crumpled glass of hundreds of test tubes. A large smear of red blood on the floor and a drizzle of her coppery blood mixed with it suggests one of the intake specialist Lillian uses as cannon fodder to sedate the captives may have been especially unlucky this time.

“Remarkable, isn’t it?  She looks like a human playing dress-up,” Lex jokes.

“Yes,” Lena manages to get out.  “Quite something.”

Lena wonders how early she would have to leave tonight to be in London by dawn, in that shabby little brothel with that doe-eyed architecture major under her...Amanda...that’s the name.  Trade a scrap of her obscene wealth for the obscene fantasy that she can be loved. 

Maybe she could pay extra and chat about Amanda’s portfolio.

“Is this your idea of matchmaking, Lex?  You know I prefer at least the principle of consent, potential alimony-seekers notwithstanding.”

He puts his hand over his heart.  “You wound me, sweet sister.”

“I bring you here--against mothers recommendation may I add--because after the capture, one of our prods exploded.  Mercy’s. This one disarmed her, wrecked the prod. Deformed the metal, crystallized the lithium in the battery. The prod was in our labs Tokyo.   The battery was in a chemical plant in Ohio. They began to melt less than one thousandth of a nanosecond apart. I know, I know!” he exclaims. “Spooky action at a distance.”

“Sounds ridiculous but instruments don’t lie.  It happened faster than we could have transmitted a signal over dedicated fiber.  Much faster.”

“Can you imagine, Lex?  That kind of power. Communications, rapid prototyping, information security...maybe even mass transit could be revolutionized.  What sort of equipment do we think was she using?”

“Implanted technology, I suppose.  Military issue hardware, to be sure.  She was wearing a Nine Inch Nails shirt and track pants when we picked her up.  Wallet with some business cards, a picture of her and two other women, no keys, no cash.  Her skin is barely permeable to X-rays, when we do radioactive dyes, her blood vessels block it.”

Lena shuffles the information in her head, visualizing a deck of cards.  Buying fuel in dumpy clothes first thing in the morning. Killing at a distance with implosion.   Shredding body armor and flesh with a touch. Impossible to X-ray. Willing to take on a dozen ex-military thugs and the Graves twins without a weapon.

_ Black holes small and unstable enough to fizzle after consuming a bit of matter.  Has to be. And she wasn’t using equipment...that fuel was her food which means she’s radiation-hardened.  I’ll bet my plea deal on it. Lex, once again you are blinded by your mechanical mind. Not everything has to be a machine. _

“You’ve made your case.  I’ll work with her,” Lena tells him.  “Go talk salesman at someone else. I imagine Defense Secretary Rumsfeld would welcome your flattery.”

“For you, Lenny, anything.  Even speaking to that...toad.”

“Glass?” she asks.

“One way, except for at the far side.”

“Good.  See if you can get me a keyboard.  Something she can type on. Nothing fancy.  Electric typewriters would be best, actually.”

Lex cocks an eyebrow.  

“Tactile stimulation grounds the mind or so Doctor Hamilton tells me.  My patients tell me more when they are in a good frame.”

He nods.  “You are too sweet for this wicked world, Lena.  Will do. You girls have fun.”

He leaves, locking the door behind him.   Lena steps up to the one-way part of the glass and toggles the mike.

“What is your name?”

“Emilia.”

_ I will think of you as alien so that if--when--my mother kills you, I feel less connected. _

“No surname?”

“No idea.  What’s your surname?  Might it be on the mailbox out front?  Asking for a friend.”

Lena forces a frown to fight the laugh she was feeling rise up her throat.

“Given our relative situations and prospective lifespans, I can tell you.  Luthor.”

“Ah, yes.  Luthor. I don’t know an alien who doesn’t look over their shoulder when they pass your buildings.  So I am a victim of the lover’s spat between a titan of industry and the Man of Steel in all his bespandexed glory.  As epitaphs go, I’ve heard of worse.”

This time, Lena cannot fight back the laugh.  She will play it off later as derision when her mother receives the footage and challenges her.  Just in case, she goes over to the computer and plugs in the scrambler the government techs gave her.  She can edit the footage before posting it and still meet her mother’s nightly inspection.

“You are part of the fairer sex,” her captive observes.  “If I am not mistaken and I so rarely am about fairness, women, or sex.  So you are not Lex. Lillian? No. Voice is too young. I’m not seeing any wrinkles or a sadistic glamazon in my head.  Lena.”

“Your ears are good, I see.”

Lena jots that down.  She always starts with an assessment of the alien’s senses, its way of seeing the world.  For all her mother’s gleeful slicing and her brothers mind games and tear-downs of their technology, she suspects she has things more dangerous than either of them.  Weapons don’t win wars alone. Sun Tzu didn’t preach knowing your enemy because he lacked air support.

“My ears are just holes in the side of my head, actually.  Glad you think they’re cute.”

“Still, you are blindfolded and you correctly detected my gender.  I am told I have an unappealing voice. Mannish, even.”

“Mommy doesn’t tell you you’re beautiful?” the alien sneers.

“Age?” Lena hisses, trying to get this turned back around.

“Nine hundred and four.”

“Age?”

The alien chooses to sing rather than answering.

“In fourteen ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.  In fourteen ninety three, my mothers said farewell to me. In fourteen ninety four, I sailed across stars galore.  In fourteen ninety five, on Earth I did arrive. In fourteen ninety six, I found myself betwixt. In fourteen ninety seven, I found myself some heaven.  In fourteen ninety eight, before I a girl laid prostrate. In fourteen ninety nine, I invented the sixty ni-”

“Stop!” Lena shouts.  “I’ll take your word for it for now.”

Lena has the sinking feeling her captive can keep up this on the fly, poorly paced raunchiness through either the modern day or the end of Lena’s sanity.  Whichever comes first.

“Mothers, you said.”

“Hmm.  One like me and one all slick and wriggly.  Tell me, Lena Luthor of the Park Avenue Luthors, have you heard of a Rakni-Xinda?”

Lena flicks her eyes over the tablet she carries, scrolling through the top level notes.  That is a new species.

“Tell me more.”

“I would like to, I really would, but I’m afraid my nieces and nephews would never forgive their old aunty.  I’m the only pureblood Thessalian they know...it would break all their little hearts if I got mother in trouble.”

“So you’re a...Thessalian, then.  What is the name of your home planet?  Thess?” Lena guesses, trying to use a lisp similar to their short-lived Daxamite captive.  

The accent this woman has is similar, although it has an entirely different effect on Lena with a female voice.  The rolling consonants and sharply clicked vowels are far more affecting this way and with the sing-song and the raunchy jokes...sweet and sour both, like bad fruit.

_ Perhaps I’m too gay to torture people.  My lawyer will be so relieved! _

“Hmm...not good enough friends yet.  I am from Mickey Mouse, in the Disney system.  I still don’t get why someone would go around calling themselves Earthling or Kryptonian.  Why not just say 822 Walnut Street, Keys Under the Doormat, Sleeps Alone rather than calling yourself Lena?”

Her captive laughs.  All in all, she seems eerily confident.

“I mean, someone might start a torture camp!  For humans this time! Why make it easy for them?  Now, Lena Luthor, let me ask you a question. Sometime very soon, this place will be torn apart by, at minimum, two Rakni-Xinda who will probably have skipped meals for the purpose, a Coluan and…” she imitates a drumroll with a roll of the tongue.

“Probably a Kryptonian.  When she’s angry, my friend makes Jawline, Dimples and the American Way look like a clown having a slap-fight with his shadow.  Can you give me a single reason why I should ask them to leave Lena Luthor alive, with her heart in her ribs and her eyes not ripped from their sockets?  Why should I waste one breath begging her for your life?”

Her captive turns her head, left and right, like she were switching ears to track a sound.

“You’re bluffing,” Lena snaps though the rising inflection means even she doubts it.

“Am I?  Or is there a six-inch blade found at the scene of my kidnapping with my breakfast on it?  Laying there buzzing and pulsing with a faint blue light? Short-short-short. Long-long-long.  Short-short-short. S-O-S and look! Now I’m adding Lena Luthor.”

Lena swallows, her throat closing.  The alien is tapping her thumb and forefinger together, something she wasn’t doing before.  It stands to reason that if things she attacks have quantum entanglements as a side effect that she might have household implements that she can control.  Spookily. At a distance. Anywhere in the universe.

Capturing her was like Troy hauling the horse inside the gates.  Only this horse might be able to crush the king’s skull from the dungeon while shackled to the wall and play the lyre in Athens at the same time.

“I could ask them to kill  _ you  _ first, right now, and they’d hear it.  Though it would be a shame…especially the eyes.  Truly marvelous, your eyes. It’s subtle but once you see it, you really want to stare.  Somehow you have the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen and the greenest and both in the same face.”

Lena’s blood chills.  She is not being bluffed or stalled.  She is being worked, anxiety by anxiety.  This alien detected her mild heterochromia through a blindfold tested for complete blockage of light and three layers of one-way glass.  She was not photographed for that article in Forbes, only interviewed. The only reason Lillian doesn’t know she’s a lesbian is she has successfully avoided photographs for nine years with Lex’s help.

“How do you know that?” Lena demands.

Her captive-turned-tormenter tilts her head downward, exposing more of those backwards curving.   _ What are they....tentacles? Glands? Muscles? Sensory organs,  _ Lena realizes.

“Shh.   Need to listen.  The lights. Cold white?  Silvery white not yellow white?” the alien asks.

“Yes.”

“Blue and green it is.  Since you so asked...I can feel it.  Light bends in space and green light ever so slightly less than blue.  Right in front of me are two big, luscious, frightened eyes and one reflects light which bent just slightly less than the other.”

Lena inhales quickly, forcing herself to ground in her body.

“That would also be how I know you must have the most spectacularly succulent breasts.  Dense but then pillowy closer to the cherries on top. Wow. Quite the underwire! Just a couple of mouthfuls of whipped cream...sad that I’m spoken for.”

“I will come back,” Lena promises.  “When you’re in a more cooperative mood.”

She reaches for the door handle and it crumples in on itself with a shriek of metal.  Turning only her head, Lena sees the alien’s balled fist.

“Oh dear, did the lock on door just collapse under its own weight?  Shame. I suppose it’s for the best, we’re just getting to know each other.  Why stop now?”

Lena walks over to the unblocked part of the glass.

“If I were to give you latitude and longitude, would that be reason enough?  I think we might be on the same side here,” Lena whispers.

“A double agent?  Twice as criminal, twice as sexy.  Lena, my pet, you’re such a sneaky little minx.  I’m listening.”

Lena breathes deep, tries to remember one of her mother’s Gaelic prayers, and tries not to think about how bad a syringe of post-coital cyanide from Mercy would hurt.

  
  


**March 13, 2006  | Kate Kane (“Batwoman”)**

Batwoman’s Current Location

 

Kate cards her fingers through her damp hair and pushes off from the shower wall.  The bruise on her back is painful but will probably be short-lived. Under the ocean of tattoos she wears -- old German runes and Kabbalah and symbols from old grimoires the Vatican stashes away -- no one can really see it.  

Grundy hits hard but not after his fingers and tibia are shattered.  The guards at Arkham were more than willing to take a roll of Benjamins and give her a go so she could blow off some steam and so that their nastiest inmate would be softened up.  The aspirin will kick in soon.

Her phone just keeps wringing.  She fumbles on the shelf outside the shower and grabs it.

The five part medley of an incoming Justice League communication greets her.  The Marine Corps Band playing first bars of America the Beautiful. A lilting Greek song in a succulent accent.  A blast of Metallica -- creative, Bruce! -- that makes her wince. The screech of a hawk. A lion’s brassy roar.

“Kane Investments, Customer Support.”

“It’s Barbara.  Got someone for you.  Didn’t feel fair giving her to Bruce.  She’s on FaceTime so...are you wearing clothes?”

“I will be.  Thirty seconds.”

Barbara snickers.

“She still there, you sly dog?”

“No.  Still in the nunnery, I’m afraid.”

“Kate.  You need to shake this.  Beating up Grundy for funsies is bad for you.  I think there might be someone for you...maybe a little black box on your coffee table?  You know Barda. Sharpened steel on the outside, strawberry bubblegum inside and to her friends.  Probably doing her nails in bed, listening to to Justin Timberlake and complaining to the parademons that you didn’t circle ‘like you’ on the note.”

Kate swallows, thinking of the small black box with its pitted shell, worn grooves and the face of Darkseid scratched off its plating.  She actually keeps it in the toy drawer now which is a fantastically pathetic thing to do.

“Just transfer whoever it is,” Kate groans.

“Done.  Just...be gentle.  They’ve been through a lot.”

Kate has a hunch who this is.  She licks her teeth, hoping that there’s nothing in them.  The image of a crimson-edged bat with blood dripping from its wings disappears.  In its place is a cozy-looking coffee shop with a bookshelf of romances divide into ‘cis-het’, ‘queer’, ‘paranormal’ and ‘period pieces’ as the backdrop for a quite dark-skinned woman who seems to be holding the phone wrong.  All that Kate can see are broad hands and ropy muscles that look hard as goddamned steel cables. Plum-purple skin, juicy on the tongue with a hard pit underneath.

Kate feels like her ovaries just detonated and there’s a profound urge to drop the towel.

 _Need to get laid,_ she decides.

“Uh, phone’s at a bad angle, kid.”

“Oops!”

It swings up to show a round face dominated by gold irises.  A nose that somehow blends the eagle-like slant of Julius Caesar with a facial tic that give it the harmlessness of a baby rabbit.  Lips that are either kiss-bruised or just that sexy shade of purple to begin with.  

Black Knight, if Barbara’s sketch of the lower half of her face was anything like accurate.

 

“That’s better,” Kate manages.  

“So...yeah.  I’m the Black Knight, campus celebrity and honorary member of Tri-Delta and Kappa Delta.  Bailed a couple of sisters out of dumpster fire dates and scrapes with the wrong kind of guy.  Wow. I sound really arrogant now. You probably figured out who I am. Cute neck tat, by the way.”

Kate rubs the black and hot pink Star of David nervously.  The triangles were all filled in using the red to white to red stripes of the lesbian flag and two interlinked distaffs sit in the center.  

It’s a favorite, mostly because Maggie has its counterpart -- a flourished cross outlined in the same colors with the distaffs in place of Jesus -- on her back spanning the whole width and from her shoulderblades almost to her ass.  It ends right above a pair of dips that Kate would do jello shots out of...and has.

“Thanks.  Listen. I have a date,” Kate lies.  “So I have to keep this short.”

“Oh!  Sure. Bet she’s a real cutie,” Black Knight teases with a click of the tongue.  “Friend of mine went missing from the docks five days ago. Well, ex-girlfriend but we didn’t like hate each other afterwards and I don’t want her getting hurt.  I need some help finding her.”

“Sure,” Kate agrees before the non-lizard parts of her brain can weigh in.

“You sure?  Don’t want to deprive some nice Jewish girl.”

“She’s not Jewish.  She’s...hard to say.  Atheistic Satanist is close-ish.  Make your own way, be ambitious, all that. Frankly alien religions make about as much sense to me as serving a pretzel cold.”

“Ah,” Black Knight says with a wink.  “Cold pretzels are just  _ meshuggah _ .  Nudge, nudge, say no more.  So you should fit right in with my team.  We’ve got four aliens, if you count me, and two token humans.  We even have a token straight.”

“Excuse me!  I am a soldier, not a diversity hire!”

“That’s my sister,” Black Knight explains.  “Thinks she’s a badass.”

“I am!”

“Where’d she serve?” Kate asks.

Her dad would clobber her if she didn’t ask.  West Point gave her three things: respect for soldiers, dishonorable discharge paperwork and a burning hatred of the religious right’s hold on government.  

“Iraq, ten months.  Came back early for the first class of Ranger testing.  Passed it with my sister from another mister. Her buddy, Vasquez.”

“She single?” Kate asks, only semi-ironically.

“She swears she’s our token straight,” Black Knight sighs.  “Poor thing.”

It hangs unspoken between them.  The lady who doth protest her straightness the loudest often be the gayest.

“Poor thing,” Kate agrees.  “Let me put you on hold. Two minutes.  Then I can give you an ETA.”

She dials Alfred.

“Mr. Pennyworth, how quick can the jet make it to California?”

“With young Master Al-Ghul’s last round of modifications?  Three hours, I believe. If you would do an old man a favor, might you and Barbara put the fear of god into him again?  Taking his edits off of Master Wayne’s Wikipedia article is,” Alfred sighs. “Not my professional strength.”

“Gladly.  Can you ask Tim to load the bike?  The one I use in the field. Crime scene kit and my toybox.  Armor and medkit is already with me.”

“Of course, miss Kane.  Anything else?”

“Yeah, actually.  Macallan ‘18, some prime ribs, flatware and glasses.  Want to celebrate a case well solved.”

“Macallan ‘18, excellent choice.  Chilled?”

“God, no.  I’m not an animal, Alfred.”

“Of course.”

“I have to go, my contact is on hold.”

“Of course.  Safe travels and happy hunting.”

Kate switches back to Black Knight who seems to have developed some form of boneless growth around her neck that strongly resembles an amorous mixed race woman with dreadlocks who is busily rubbing her cheek on Black Knight’s neck.

“She back?” Black Knight’s girlfriend asks.

“Kate?”

“I’m here.”

“You there, she here, she mine,” the girl warns Kate.

“Solid copy...whoever you are.  Black Knight? Give me six hours and I will be there, loaded for bear with a forensic kit.”

“Sounds good!  Glad to have you on the team.”

Six hours.  That gives her two hours to go through her vibrators one at a time and one hour to scream into the void and see if Big Barda answers.  Maybe if she actually has a date lined up when she lands, this won’t be so depressing.

  
  


 

The green light spinning at the end of the ramp calls to her.  Kate hits the button. The ramp drops as the jet swoops low over the harbor, kicking spray up into the cargo bay.  The autopilot has lined her up with a shabby-looking pier and a shabbier looking warehouse. The scene of the crime.

Kate twists the throttle and the Harley’s engine snarls under its armored shell.   _ Attagirl.   _ She releases the brake, savoring the kick of acceleration and the air rushing by her cowl and yanking on her wig.  

The polymer tires bite the asphalt with a grinding sound -- not the squeal of the rubber ones -- and she eases off the throttle, dipping between dockworkers and a transit cop who dives out of her way. 

Black Knight looks up.  She has switched her street clothes for all black armor that looks like segmented plates with some kind of flexible, slowly undulating bodysuit under it.  Suddenly her team is not scattered all over the yard. They are collected in a tight circle in the corner, blue sparks fading around them. Half of them look bewildered and one small man in a green sweater is dry heaving.

Kate spins to a stop, leaving a crescent skid mark and coming close enough to the warehouse wall to touch it.  She kills the engine and engages the sentry mode. Two computer-controlled cannons pop out of the cargo pocket and sweep the area.  No one steals her baby and anyone who ignores the warnings and tries again gets nine millimeters worth of depleted uranium to the forehead.  Bruce can hate guns all he likes...he doesn’t have anything to protect even half as sentimental as Veronica.

“Nice entrance,” sweater guy murmurs.

He starts clapping and soon everyone but the two soldiers -- they’re obvious -- joins.

Kate dismounts and bows, feeling a bit giddy among this ragtag crew.

“Me, my sister alex, Vasquez, my pet geek Winn and the aliens are Kyn, Tam and Nakka.  The last three are an item, committed poly relationship. Emilia was theirs and possibly pregnant, so they’re pretty strung out.”

“I would be too,” Kate admits, squeezing her eyes tight against the image of a bruised and bleeding Maggie in some hellhole. It’s unpleasant even if Maggie with a baby bump calls up flickers of laughing toddlers, Italian lullabies and a warmth that instantly fills Kate’s chest.

Children.  Kate wanting them, Maggie afraid she would turn out to be her hateful, homophobic father or her smothering Catholic mom.  The exact issue that broke them. 

She shakes it away.   _ Long gone. _

“What do we have?” she asks Black Knight.

“Kidnapping in broad daylight.  We think mercenaries. It was four days before I could be contacted because I was,” Black Knight pauses.  “Out of the country.”

_ I’ll just bet you were. _

“But Emilia’s folks came by here first and they have excellent noses.  At least a dozen human scents. We found some shell casings behind the crates,” sweater guy explains.  “And bleach where blood was cleaned up, human and alien.”

“Bullet type?” Kate aks.

Sweater guy taps some kind of armored tablet he’s carrying.

“Not exactly a fighter but if I’m reading this, 5.56mm by 45mm, 7.62x by 45 mm ‘R’ whatever that is and some buckshot.”

Kate hums.

“You sure about the ‘R’ on that?”

“Pretty sure, yeah.  Our computer is literally out of this world and he had a robot cut it out of the pavement and do the matching.”

Kate sighs.  Crime scene robot sounds like a nice way to keep her hands blood and guts-free when working a murder.  She has to have one. Maybe if she’s a really good girl, Black Knight will give her one as a thank-you.

“Private military contractors, I imagine.  Hard to see any government forces using a mix of NATO and Soviet ammunition types.  That’s the eastner bloc’s seven-mil rifle bullet. Mercs are weird...they have favorite guns and some of them like to show off.”

One of the soldiers nods, the sister.  Alex is a lanky redhead with a gelled haircut that looks a lot like early Elvis Presley and looks far too gay to be street legal.

“It’s not ours.  Not military anyway.   Our CO,” she gestures between her and her war buddy.  “Reports to the secretary directly. She has a lot of pull and she made the rounds of the other special ops branches.”

“Lets operate on that assumption then,” Kate agrees.

She mounts the nearest stack of crates with a leap and a swing around a retaining girder that were both much fancier than needed.  

“What are you looking for?” Black Knight hollers up at her.

“Bread crumb trail,” Kate replies. “You said forensics found evidence of cleanup.  So our best bet is something the victim dropped in the fight. If we’re really lucky it was deliberate and will give us a clue.”

“Kill the lights, would you?”

Black Knight holds up her hand like she were making a knife-handed strike and walks over to the power box.  The moment she touches her fingers to the box, it starts to glow and is soon nothing but a mass of slag on the floor.  She kneels down and touches it again, this time freezing it into a blob.

_ That’s one way. _

“Showing off for the pretty girl?” Black Knight’s girlfriend teases.

“It’s permanent.  Never know if something else might be in here using the power.”

Kate shoots her a finger gun.

“That...is some Batman thinking right there.  Never assume you know something about the scene unless you did it yourself.”

“She knows Batman,” sweater guy all but squeals.

Kate looks around, taking in each crate individually.  The place is clearly abandoned and perhaps mob-owned. The crates are stacked inefficiently, like children’s blocks, and one group of them seems to have a crevice in the middle where something could be hidden.

“There,” she points.  “Those crates make a wall with a gap.  Something could be hiding.”

She drops, letting her cape carry her on to the rim.  The air in the gap reeks and she toggles her filters on. Slumped against the far crate is a dead merc, covered with flies.  He’s got a broken neck with bone sticking out and in the front of his helmet is a weird-looking knife which keeps buzzing with some kind of electrical charge.  Whatever it is, it’s not normal because it went straight through the helmet leaving some kind of glassy cracks at the edges. It was either very hot or vibrating very hard or both.

Kate climbs back out of the gap and looks back at the team, hand on her cocked hip.  

“So, I’m guessing you didn’t notice the dead guy with the glowing blue knife in his head?”

Black Knight smacks her forehead and her armor rings like a gong.

“It’s my first crime scene!”

She flies up and the down, landing beside Kate with a crack of air.

“That’s Emilia’s knife. The victim’s.”

Kate squeezes her shoulder.

“Looks like she stabbed him and then tossed him up here in the chaos.  The angle of the neck break,” Kate observes, pointing. “The back of his head hit.  His buddies forgot to look for the body. Told you, kid. Bread crumbs.”

A four-armed robot with a torso the size of a Buick and a head studded with camera lenses appears, hovering behind Black Knight.  Kate swings on reflex and it catches her fist with metal fingers, pops a blowtorch out of the shaft of its arm and wiggles it back and forth as if to say ‘naughty girl’ with the white-hot flame.

“Good god!  Warn a girl, next time.”

“Right.  Sorry. Kleenex, Batwoman.  Batwoman, Kleenex.” she says, and the robot offers a metal hand.  Kate shakes it.

“Kleenex, analyze the pulses.”

“Kleenex.  Really?”

Black Knight shrugs.

“Campus patrol bot and monitoring system for my war on boys behaving badly.  Hand Lotion, Kleenex or Penthouse. Rolled a dice and divided by two.”

Either none of her sensors penetrated the cloaking or Scotty beamed it here.  

Kate needs a drink.

“Done, Black Knight.  It is a two-hundred and five letter message in Morse code followed by latitude and longitude.”

“Transcribe and project.”

> **SOS** **  
>  ** **PRISONER** **  
>  ** **LUTHORS** **  
>  ** **UNDERGROUND FACILITY** **  
>  ** **LENA LUTHOR PRESENT DO NOT HARM** **  
>  ** **EYEBALL RELAYS THE FOLLOWING** **  
>  ** **BIRDSEED IN PARK** **  
>  ** **TRASH CAN AT WEST EDGE** **  
>  ** **OR** **  
>  ** **MOTHER BEGGING WITH TODDLER** **  
>  ** **CHIRP CHIRP NEED YELLOW BIRD**

Black Knight’s sister mounts the crate beside her and looks at the projection.   

“Luthors,” she snarls.  “This must be this CADMUS group that has all the aliens hunkered.  I caught them trying to buy alien children from a school teacher who was sheltering them.  Fifty million, which means they’re well funded. The Luthors could do that.”

Kate points at the next line.

“Then why tell us not to harm Lena Luthor?”

“Double agent, maybe?  Embedded informant for the government or law enforcement?  My CO has an ally with the FBI. She can run that through them, see if maybe it is an informant.”

Black Knight nods.

“Kleenex?  What is the latitude and longitude?”

“Stand by.  Transcribing grid to Earth geography.  According to the CIA’s satellite imagery that is a remote region of Iran with multiple western companies allowed by the government in order to maintain oil rigs.  Including LuthorCorp Mineral. They run several machine shops and there is a thermally irregular space in the complex which might indicate underground bunkers.”

“Crap,” Alex hisses.  “Iran is not friends with the US Army.  Also? Please tell your robot to stop cracking CIA computers.”

“True that,” Kate replies.  “Iran isn’t exactly friendly.”

She crosses her arms and leans against the support beam.

“But don’t Rangers lead the way?”

Alex’s lip curls up and her eyes gleam.

“We do.  I’ll make a call.  See if I can’t get some permission.  And Black Knight? Do  _ not  _ do this without me.  In fact, stay back. Lex Luthor hates … ” she stalls.

“It’s all right, sis, telling Batwoman is fine.  I think Batgirl might already suspect anyhow.”

“He’s not a big fan of Kryptonians and all our indications suggest that only the DEO even knows you exist, let alone as Black Knight.  You fly through that roof and chances are he’s in the wind.”

“Bring her back, Alex.”

“Damn straight.”

Alex throws her hand out towards Kate.

“A pleasure.”

Kate grabs her at the elbow.

“Anything for a woman in uniform.”

Tires screech outside and car doors slam.

“Police!  On the ground!” 

“Problem?” Black Knight asks.

“Not sure.  I called in the homicide but we’re supposed to have a liason.  Prevent friendly fire and misunderstandings like this.” 

Alex pulls out a hardened cell phone and scrolls through some notes.

“Says it is a…Maggie Sawyer?  Transfer from Gotham PD who runs some sort of team to try and keep aliens alive but off the radar.”

_ Nope! _

Kate leaps from the crate.  

“That’s my exit cue, Black Knight.  Call me! We should do lunch. Steaks and scotch.  Bring your girl.”

Despite her best efforts, Kate has to walk by Maggie on the way out.  

“Batwoman.”

“Sawyer.”

“Hey,” Maggie says, reaching out with a hand still wearing a pale spot from where their engagement rings were.

“Take care of yourself.”

“Will do.  You too.”

She walks into the warehouse and hollers up at the top of the crates.

“Hey, Danvers!  Wanna tell me why you’re in my city with a half-dozen aliens?  You got a thing for me?”

Kate turns on her cowl’s rear camera and sees a blush crawl all the way up Danvers' neck and face.  Danvers gives a goofy grin and hops down off the crate. Her eyes travel Maggie more than a straight girl’s should before locking in on her face.

It’s understandable.  Those dimples could unlock any girl’s latent gayness.

  
  


* * *

 

 

**March 19, 2006   | Sara Lance (“Black Canary”/”White Canary”)**

Waverider 

Captain’s Cabin

 

Sara rubs her thumb over the note.

_ Reserved for the girlfriend of Sara Lance. _

She sniffs, wiping her snot-covered mouth.

“Captain Lance?” Gideon asks.

“I miss Ava,” she sobs. 

“I...can understand.  If you would let an old computer give you advice, miss Lance?”

“Can’t make things any worse.”

“Ava is most likely processing.  The revelations of her status as a clone and Rip’s treatment of her would be traumatizing to anyone, even such a singular woman.  If her behaviors and various surveys on behavior of women such as herself is any indication, I calculate a 68.2% chance she will contact you and seek reconciliation in the next six months.”

Sara laughs weakly.

“Processing?  You been watching L Word without me?”

“No.  I have been reading psychology and relationship books so that I may better assist.”

Sara relaxes as much as she can which turns out to mean leaving the fetal position.

“Would you like me to play some music, Captain?”

Sara works her jaw.  She needs to get this out of her system.

“Gideon, synthesize an antidote to the lotus blossom serum.  Take us to the edge of the temporal zone. Broadcast depth.”

“Of course, though I confess I am not sure why you would want to neutralize the lotus blossom serum.  You have made great strides controlling the Lazarus Pit’s bloodlust.”

Sara looks up at her gear locker.  

“Because, Gideon.  I need to distract myself and right now, I am so mad at myself for not trying to make Ava stay that I could kill someone.  I’d rather it be someone who deserves it, not Mick just because he forgot to do dishes.”

“I...I see.  Shall I scan for mention of your League alias?”

“Yes, on any Earth where I am active.”

The deck tilts as Gideon makes a swooping maneuver to bring them to the edge of the temporal zone.

“Done.  Shall I display them now?”

“Yes, please.  Focus on revenge contracts and sort by victim.”

“Stand by.”

The synthesizer by the desk flickers and a dose of antidote appears next to a glass of scotch.  Gideon knows her well.

“Captain Lance?  If I may make a suggestion, it appears that your counterpart on Earth-38 is a CIA asset operating in the middle east on a per contact basis.  She was recruited out of the League as a double agent. There are three contacts to her pending currently, one of them urgent. A rescue mission.”

_ I have a goody-two-shoes-me on Earth-38?  That’s scarier than the vampire-me that tried to eat Mick last month. _

“Really?” Sara asks, righting herself on the edge of the bed.

“Really,” Gideon deadpans.  “She is on a mission in Afghanistan now...however it appears that in this timeline, she goes missing during it and does not reappear for five, nine or twenty two years depending on timeline branching.”

Sara wiggles her toes on the bare steel of the floor.

“Is her alias Black Canary or White Canary?”

“Neither.  This Sara Lance has yet to go through her teenage rebellion to vigilante phase,” Gideon teases.  “She goes by The Canary as well as her codenames Yellow Bird and Ta-er al-Sahfer.”

“Print me a new Black Canary uniform.  Two tantos, katana, pack of knives, wrist crossbows  Add League Robes with shawl and a headscarf. Vials of diluted digitoxin and taipan snake venom.”

“Under way.  Ninety minutes.”

Sara toggles her earpiece.

“Jax?”

“Yo,” he replies.  The sounds of electronic zapping and creaking cushions can be heard.

“Whatcha doing?” she teases.

“Zari and I are just getting some couch time in.”

“By which he means I am slaughtering him in this new video game from future Earth-20.”

Sara laughs.

“Glad you’re getting along.  Find the pause button and meet me on the bridge in fifteen.  You too Zari. We’re going to do something naughty which involves me playing hooky.  I need Jax on the controls and Zari to help me with my accent. Martin can be adult supervision.”

“On our way,” Jax replies.  “Hey!”

“Backstab kill.  It is totally legit,” Zari teases.

Sara downs the antidote first, sipping the scotch while the red tinges the light and her ears fill with the mutterings of insane ghosts.

  
  


 

“Let me get this straight,” Jax begins, leaning on Gideon’s bridge console.  “You took the antidote to your no-murder sauce  _ on purpose _ and made like fifty poisoned throwing knives.  You want us to drop you on an Earth we’ve never been to rescue a woman from an alien concentration camp?  Drop you Iran and leave you?”

“Because you’re in a bad mood?” 

“That’s the fifty-cent tour of it,” Sara admits.

Jax facepalms.

“You remember how they don’t like queers--or women-in Iran?”

Sara shrugs.  “I’m fluent, I'm literally a ninja, I'm sneaky and Zari can brush me up on street Farsi.”

“I can”, Zari agrees, followed by another mouthful of trail mix.

Jax facepalms.

“Ah!  You’re killing me here, girl!”

Stein has been rolling his brandy snifter the whole time.

“What kind of concentration camp?” Stein asks.

“Concentration camp for aliens.”

“Are aliens not well-liked on Earth-38?  I would think such advanced civilizations would be a blessing to encounter.”

“Officially they aren’t a real thing.  I guess someone is taking advantage of that and getting their evil on.  This place is under FBI investigation and I’m being asked to rescue an alien and check on the snitch.”

“Extraterrestrial life on Earth, living among us but completely in secret.” Stein marvels.

“Astonishing,” Sara, Jax and Zari say in unison.

“Quite.”

“What about other-you?” Zari asks.

“On assignment and according to Gideon about to drop off the map.  I have five years minimum to play impostor if I feel like it. If we meet, I guess she’ll kill me.  She sounds like a better person than I ever was. You game?”

Jax and Zari nod and Stein says nothing.  Exactly what she was expecting.

“You get killed, I’m going to be really mad at you,” Jax grumbles.

“You get killed, I am going to use my totem to play pinball with your dead body,” Zari threatens.  “Charlie is going to go to your funeral and swap caskets so she can pop out.”

The waver in Zari’s voice suggests that what would really happen is it would break her heart.  

_ Note to self, do not get dead. _

“I am surrounded by children,” Stein complains.

Charlie rolls in, ripped jeans and dreadlocked undercut and  and mostly-empty gin bottle.  She has a swagger  that makes Zari’s eyes bulge slightly with each step.

_ Did she shapeshift herself a buttlift?   _ Sara wonders.   _ Sure did.  Among other things.  One day with her powers back and it’s magic plastic surgery?  Lucky Zari. _

“Oi!  Boss lady!  Some people just go out and have a shag when they’re hurting.  Ya ever try it?”

She throws her arms out and Sara leans in for a thump on the back.

“Not my style.  Saving myself for marriage.”

“Saving yourself for a bloody Iron Woman lookalike.”

“Mrs. Thatcher was quite attractive when she was younger,” Stein points out.

“Don’t get dead, yeah?” Charlie asks.

“If I did, who would you steal liquor from?”

  
  


* * *

 

**March 19, 2006   | Sara Lance (“Black Canary”/”White Canary”)**

LuthorCorp Facility

Northwest Iran

 

Sara drops from the railing to straddle the doorframe over the guard post’s exit.  The leather soles of her slippers catch the concrete without a squeak. Three-man post, she learned when casing the joint.

“I’m going to go get a smoke.  Back in ten.”

“Keep an eye out for that Luthor chick.  Keeps wandering the hallways crying. Don’t need the boss-woman to know that.”

A man steps out of the door below her.  Sara drops, clamping her thighs around his head.  His screams are muffled and he staggers around, trying to shake her.  She grabs his skull and thrusts to the left with her hips. There’s a crunch and he drops like a puppet with its strings cut.

The red tint bleeding off the overhead lights grows stronger.  Whispers tickle her ears and teeth press on her cheeks. The ghosts in the Pit  _ like  _ this side of her.

She draws the tanto daggers and rolls her wrists, testing the balance.  League blacksmiths have nothing on Gideon. Retreating into the deepest shadow and dragging the body with her, she waits.  

“You hear that?” one of his buddies asks.

“Yeah.  Follow me.”

They come out with guns drawn, sweeping the room with the laser sights.

She comes up from her crouch, putting one knife in each man’s chin, at the soft spot between the two halves of the jaw.  Eleven inches of pointed steel drive up, up, up and in to the underside of the brain.

“No one ever looks down first thing,” Sara sighs.  “Because you never take the short girl seriously.” She flicks the blood from her knives.

The red sizzles, her vision tunnels and the spirits shriek gleefully.

_ Room 43, the note at the information drop said. _

It’s on the lowest level.  Flattening herself against the wall, she checks the locked door.  A small, wire-reinforced window shows giant wrist and ankle shackles with a blue-skinned naked woman hanging from them.  Must be the alien.

The alien lifts its head and despite the blindfold it feels like it’s looking straight at her.  Sara puts her finger to her lips. She sees it hold up three fingers and start curling them back.  The door is ripped from its hinges with a shriek of torn steel. 

“How do I get you out?”

“Coolant line, up there.  Should take the magnets out.”

One slash of the katana takes it clean off the mount.  The shackles slack and the alien drops to the floor, landing clumsily.  It rips the blindfold off and Sara is staring into a pair of purple eyes with S-shaped pupils like a snake.

“I’m Emilia.”

“Sara  Where the informant?”

The alien nods to the other side of the glass.  A woman in a purple blouse and a black skirt is dozing in an office chair.  A blouse which really should have unbuttoned _itself_ given its contents and her sleeping that bad angle.

“Cover your face,” Emilia tells Sara.  “I’ll get the glass.”

She wraps her fist in white flame and strikes the pane, leaving a quickly spreading web of cracks.  The glass shatters into a wall of square chunks which dangle in mid-air for a few heartbeats.

“After you.”

Sara gets her arm under the woman’s shoulder.  She starts to stir.

“Upsy daisy, princess.”

Two eyes, one blue with green streaks and one green with blue streaks, snap open and fix Sara with a glare that would make Ra's Al-Ghul pause.

“Who are you?”

Sara unwinds her headscarf and puffs her sweaty hair out of her eyes.

“Sara Lance,” she replies with a grin.  “I’m here to rescue you.”

“Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?”

  
  


* * *

 

**March 19, 2006  | Kara Danvers**

National City

Ingridson Boutique and Jewelry

 

Kara’s fingers tap through the coat hangers.  These dresses are cute but none of them will work on Nadia.  White, red, green...purple? Maybe. Seems like a stretch. 

_ Is gold too much ask for?   _ She sighs.   _ Silver would be a close second. _

It’s like the fashion world has no idea how amazing Kara’s girl looks in gold or silver.  Green and purple are a waste of her natural colors and white--it’s not bad, Kara supposes--but it feels like an insult to Nadia’s pride to put her in something white and call it the prettiest one.

The dressing curtain opens with a clatter of the beads on the bar.  There before her in a red-and-silver striped velvet  _ something,  _ is Nadia.  Kara feels her throat tightening.  Alex or Winn would know what that cut is called or what type of fabric it is.  It looks good is what it is. It clings to Nadia’s body from the metal collar downward, spreading out in the front to cup her breasts while exposing her back.  As it passes her hips, it fades into a ruffled, bouncy skirt.

“Well?”  Nadia demands.  “Whatcha think?”

“Hmm.  Little twirl?” Kara suggests. “Stop.  There.”

She puts her hand on Nadia’s stomach and guides her to a straighter posture.

“I like it.  Bit brazen up top but really, when it comes to your ass, it’s positively bland.”

“I look good!” Nadia grumps, flicking her eyes to the full length mirror.  “It’s flattering.”

“Exactly.  You look good, not ‘I would eat that apple even if the witch told me it was poisoned’ which is how your ass looks when it’s flattered.”

Kara gets a peck on the cheek which was the entire point.

“I hate this,” Nadia groans.  “Stupid clam-jamming graduation and job offer.“

“I hate it too,” Kara admits.

“Can’t I just be a dropout?” Nadia whines.  “Wait until you graduate...live on your couch, come to work with you?  Hang out under your desk?”

“I’d never get anything written,” Kara jokes.  “We have almost a year, Nadia. And for my part?  I’m twice the person I was when I met you. I’m a better person and that’s all you, babe.”

A tear rolls down Nadia’s cheek and Kara leans in to kiss it away.

“Not in the store, this is a family establishment.”

“Clerk?” Kara whispers.

“Random asshat.”

“Ah.  They’re only 2d6 hit points.  Bet I can take ‘em!”

“Kara, that does it.  No more Winn for a  _ month.” _

“Now now, your warlock was... _ nummy  _ and I for one think Winn’s campaign is gayer than a tree full of monkeys.”

“This is expensive,” Nadia reminds Kara.  “You sure?”

“I got you, babe.  Winn sent me a text alert.  Apparently the last deposit Kolex made led to an IRS hearing in Congress.  Taxes will suck horse ass this year but I can spoil my girl. Which is the important bit.  Go change back and let’s go check out.”

At the end of the counter is a display of necklaces.  Kara lifts one, feeling the chain glide through her fingers.  The small ruby in the center isn’t what draws her eye. It’s what the triangular frame could hold.  The sigil of the House of El with Nadia and Kara’s names engraved above it. She has enough ruined computation crystal from her last attempt to make Kolex’s little brother to forge a small amount of artificial Rao’s Eye and Aqyte and with professional help, it would look really good.

The salesgirl is bent over behind the counter, probably messing with the safe.  She stands up and gives a startled yelp when she sees Kara.

“Sorry, miss.  I didn’t see or hear you come up.”

“It’s all right,” Kara replies.  “I’m told I should wear a bell.”

“She really should,” Nadia agrees, frowning down at something on her phone.  “On a little red collar, like a cat.”

She is not walking one more  _ inch  _ than she has to in these ridiculous fuck-me-boots now that she’s confident she will be fucked.  Perks of casual flying.

“See something you like?”

“Yes, this.  Can you do it with a custom arrangement?  I have some unique stones.”

“We can.  It takes eight weeks and a deposit.”

“How much?”

“Two fifty for the deposit.  Price depends on the piece.”

Kara reaches into her jacket pocket, counts five bills with her hand and hands them to the clerk.

“Thank you.  Phone number?”

Nadia is still lost in her phone.  Kara thinks she might get away with this entirely.  She scribbles her phone number down on the sales girl’s business card.

“Got it.  I’ll put you in touch with our jeweler and you can describe what you need.”

She opens the cash register, grabs a marker and starts swiping it on the bills.  Nadia looks over, raises her eyebrow and puts her phone away.

“You do that to everybody?  Or just her?”

Freezing up and casting her eyes down, the sales girl caps the marker and sets it aside.

“Both.  I have to do it for all bills over $20 but I could have waited.  I see how it looks now. And I’m sorry.”

Nadia taps her finger on the edge of the display case.

“First step is admitting you have a problem.  Just don’t do it in front of the customer if you want to have repeat business.  Or do but make sure to do it to Whitey McCalifornia over there,’ Nadia jokes, nodding towards a woman with a grass juice smoothie, yoga pants and a chunky glass necklace.

“Maybe mix it up?  Tuesdays do it after the shift, Wednesdays do everybody,” Kara jokes.

“That,” the salesgirl replies, brandishing the capped marker.  “Is a good idea.”

The line slowly winds up to the register and Kara lays the bag with Nadia’s dresses over the counter.

“Check or credit?”

“Cash,” Kara replies.

“Why do you do that,” Nadia mutters.  

“It’s fun and it works everywhere.  Plus it looks classy when I have to bribe the greeter.”

Nadia clicks her tongue.  “Fair point. It was a bit James Bond at the restaurant.”

The cashier sees the folded stack of bills and raises an eyebrow.

“Let me get my manager, ma’am.  He has to handle all cash sums that large.”

The manager turns out to be a tremendously dull and unpleasant man who probably spoils bananas just by walking into the room.  He doesn’t even reply when Nadia asks him about his angry swiping of the anti-counterfeit marker, repeated looks at Kara or his glancing at the bills in front of the light.

The salesgirl at jewelry waves goodbye.  Kara loops her arm through Nadia’s as they leave and puts the bags under her other.

“I got you something too.  It’s not as generous,” Nadia sighs.  “But it’s more me. Can’t give it to you now, though.  My dorm room.”

“Oh.  Do I need to be wearing or not wearing anything specific?  Do I need to wax?”

Nadia rolls her eyes.

“Ew.  Your dirty mind, I swear.  I do things for you besides sex,” she teases.  “It’s sort of handmade and it involves other people and moving parts to arrange it.  Tomorrow at eleven in the morning, okay?”

“Spine tingling.  I can’t wait.”

Nadia holds out her hand when they get to the parking garage.

“Keys.”

“Why?”

“Because you drive like someone who can’t get hurt, sees and hears things nobody else can and who can outrun bullets.  I realize that you know you won’t crash but I keep seeing my life flash before my eyes. It’s terrifying.”

Kara huffs.

“Fine.  Starting to regret upgrading your car.”

“No you’re not.  She who builds things for fun and goes to the mat for her exes cannot really complain about her girlfriend letting her tear down her car and build God only knows what wackiness into it for safety purposes.”

“No,” Kara agrees.  “I really can’t.”

It had been fifteen years--more if she counts her time in the pod--since she got to play with an omegahedron power supply, inertial dampeners, kinetic buffers or promethium-titanium-liquid crystal composites.  The look on Nadia’s face when she brought her uncle’s old hot-rod back with a gleaming new coat of cherry red, nanotube-hardened paint was everything Kara hoped for. It was worth the hassle of dragging her outpost kit out of Eliza’s garage and setting the Sunstone up on the beach to the south.  As the fractal expanded, she prioritized the machining system so that she could do Nadia’s car.

Another week or two and she’ll have her own cozy little mad scientist slash superhero lair as a bonus.  Winn can probably come up with a good name.

Nada starts up her ‘Chevrolet’ and it gives a throaty purr.  One hundred percent fake, of course--it doesn't even need  _ wheels  _ now--but it was a good way to blend in.  Uncle Jackson would probably approve, God rest him.

One thing Kara would not budge on is updating the computer.  She managed to create something that resembles the Best Buy catalog nearly button for button.  The crazy fancy one with the voice interface but it at least looks like Earth tech. No one need know.

“Greetings, Nadia.  Destination?”

“Sheridan Residence Hall.”

“Projecting route.  Recommend taking Highway 308.  The 402 Freeway is badly congested.  Display on windscreen?”

“Yes, please.”

Nada tilts the mirror, checks both her signals and shoots a look at Kara.

“Belt in, missy.”

Kara often forgets.  There’s something to Nadia’s point about her and cars.

“Yes, mistress,” Kara husks.

“Oh, you are in so much trouble when we get back.”

“Radio?” Kara asks.

Nadia nods.

Kara scans through the channels. Nadia chuckles at her self-commentary as she hunts through the stations.   “Folk rock? Nope, that had some redneck ballads the other day.” Kara taps the buttons. “Latin?” 

Nadia shrugs.  Kara tries again.

“Ugh!  What is that?  A recording of dying Scandinavian weasels?”

Nadia snickers.  “Disgustingly specific image, thanks.  Just go to KJUS already. That or the latin one.”

Kara drops to the bottom of the FM band where the campus-based channel is broadcast.

“...you are listening to KJUS, the only radio station in this old railroad town that stands for justice.  Radio for the downtrodden, the overcaffeinated, the have-nots of the new world order. Up next is some Rage Against the Machine to start the hour off with an on-the-nose band name.  Try not to think about Keanu Reeves, okay? It’s a really good song,” the DJ insists.

Nadia taps her fingers on the wheel.  Kara jerks her head back and forth to the bass.

“They killed Dr. King when he spoke out on Vietnam,” Nadia sings along, perhaps a bit more solemnly than the grunge band intended.

“Give the power to the have nots!” she and Kara croon.  “Then came the shot!”

The mile-posts whiz by until the radio volume rapidly lowers and when it does, they can hear the wailing of sirens behind them.  

“Attention.  Law enforcement.  Attention,” the computer intones.

“Driving while black,” Nadia mutters.

“Suppose it was inevitable.  We got some good points in with the sales girl,” Kara reminds her.  “Can’t have a good run of luck all night.”

“Law enforcement vehicle identified.  San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, car number 1-2-8.  Charging passive defenses.”

“Really, Kara?”

“What?  No one shoots my girl.  It’s safe,” she insists.  “It’s just...an energy shield and a really, really  _ big  _ taser.”

“And?”

“Uh, a medical robot to make sure you get back in okay?”

“And?”

“Cloaking device?”

“And?”

“Flight system and autopilot?”

“Oh my god,” Nadia laughs.  “You are so whipped!”

“And?

“Emergency transmatter beacon to beam you to my hideout?”

“And?”

“Surveillance drone that can map out the cops’ position to the nanometer, records at super high speed and can force the broadcast of it to every TV in town?”

“Okay,” Nadia chuckles.  “I get the overall idea. That last one’s clever.  Put ‘em on notice. If you think about it, every black persons’ car needs an alien-made recording and protest drone.”

Nadia blows out all the air in her lungs before drawing it all back in.  She cranks the ignition.

“Powering down.  Muting voice control.  Primitive automobile emulation mode engaged.”

Nadia shoots her another look.  Kara shrugs.

“I’m getting out with you,” Kara insists.  “I’ll just tell them first.”

“Thanks, baby.  I...I guess I never will get used to this.”

“You never  _ should.” _

[Kolex.  Search legal databases for any relevant cases and cross-reference by events.]

[Stand by.  Six cases. Displaying now]

A series of pale green Kryptonian glyphs appear in Kara’s eyes, listing the translated names and summaries of legal cases in California and the US Supreme Court.  Kara can still read her native language a couple hundred words a minute faster.

[Stick with me, friend.  I need to keep calm.]

[Always, Lady Kara.]

“Officer, what is the reason you pulled me over?” Nadia asks, voice flat.

“Routine check.  Tail-light’s out.  License and registration.”

Nadia hands it over.  The officer’s eyes go from her, to the car, to the student ID in her wallet right behind the driver’s license.  Kara can see his thought process. In his mind, the car is too nice, she doesn't deserve it and there’s no way she could afford it legally.

“Step out of the vehicle.”

[Tail-light is intact.]

[No shit, Kolex.  He didn’t hit it with an antimatter torpedo!]

Kara does not like this one bit.  This is just the sheriff playing with his food.

[Kolex, fire up all the fabbers.  Maximum priority.  Begin readying equipment for projects Flamebird, Crystal Mountain and Panopticon.  Boot up the Scion and test it.]

[Already begun.]

“I’m getting out too, officer.  I’ll do it slowly,” Kara assures him.

“You can keep your fat ass in the car,” he snarls.

“Is that an order?  Are you going on record that you are giving her an order as an officer of the law?” Nadia asks.  “If so, it can be recorded in court and I can be asked about the wording.”

[Kitten v. California, 1981] comes up on Kolex’s display. 

_ And you worded it like an utter asshole,  _ Kara realizes.   _ She’s amazing.  Cool as ice but not bending any further than she has to. _

“Fine, get out!” he barks at Kara.

Kara gets out, realizing as she works the door handle that her fingers are shaking.

“Up against the car,” the officer tells Nadia.  

Kara feels her skin heating up.  She puts her hand on the back her neck where the energy can go into her skin rather than the car’s defenses.  Until she can get control of her temper, at least.

“Hansen!” he barks at his partner, looking at Kara.  “Check her.”

A much younger, rather nervous looking deputy approaches Kara.  He doesn’t say anything to her and seems not to want to make eye contact with his partner.

_ That just can’t be good.  He would rather not be doing this, I think. _

Kara forces it back as the officer pats his way up her legs.  Forces back the flames consuming Argo City while she could only watch helplessly as everything she knew died.  Forces back the betrayal that was her father’s final orders to Kolex. Forces back the deaths of thirty-one billion because of a few stubborn officials and cascade failure in mining shafts.  Forces back the surge she felt saving Corrine, how good it felt seeing Jack’s fear.

She forces back the ancient monster lurking inside her body, shrieking in her ear to rise, begging her to rule these vermin as the goddess she is.  The Destroyer of a long-fallen empire, ready to burn this world should it threaten her.

The officer frisking Kara stops, patting her jacket’s outer pocket.  He pulls out the remaining bills and Kara regrets not bringing her debit card.

“She’s my girlfriend,” Kara explains.  “Shopping for anniversary presents. They’re in the backseat.  Receipt in my back pocket.”

The officer glances at the cash, pats Kara’s back pocket gingerly for the crinkle of a receipt and looks in the back seat.

“She’s clean,” he tells his partner.

The young man steps away from Kara and then takes several paces back from the car.

“You all right, baby?” she asks Nadia.

Nadia shakes her head, eyes squeezed tight and tears forming.

[Kolex?]

[His search of Nadia has continued far too long, particularly in…]

Kolex seems not to want to tell Kara.

[Kolex?]

[...in areas a gentleman should not touch a lady.]

“Officer,” Kara says, fighting the Worldkiller personality for control of every single brain cell.

“Please stop raping my girlfriend with your hand and let us go.”

The older deputy’s head snaps up, tearing his eyes from whatever part of Nadia he was ogling.

“What did you say?” 

“I said that you’ve checked us, she’s crying, I can’t see where your hand is besides down low and I haven’t been able to for three minutes.”

“I have a receipt for everything in the back seat and she can verify title for the car.  So you can Mirandize us and take us somewhere with other officers as witnesses or we can leave.  What you can’t do is  _ touch  _ her without  _ her clear consent and permission _ .  Just because you can pull us over for.” 

Kara glances at the bumper. 

“A set of not broken and brightly lit tail-lights,” she adds.  “Does not mean you can treat  _ my woman  _ like a piece of goddamned meat because of the color of her skin.”

_ There it is,  _ Kara realizes.  The whole question is how badly she wants to protect Nadia’s dignity versus how badly he wants to be the man with the gun who’s in charge.

“Back away from the car,” the deputy growls at Kara.  His hand shifts to his side, no doubt resting on his gun.

“Ten paces.  Do it slow, hands on your head.  Turn around and get on your knees.”

Kara steps back from the car, each pace she takes exaggerated for the drone’s benefit.

“Harry,” his partner warns him, stepping in close and probably too quiet for Nadia to catch.  "Don't."

“You’ve been through a lot today.  Let’s just go get a burger, we take it easy this shift and I can drive you home to sober up.  Huh?”

[Badge number on that one, Kolex.  He’s the weak link here.]

[Recorded and searched.  Officer Jacob Hansen. Three years.  One excessive force complaint, later invalidated by defendant plea agreement.  No uses of his service weapon on record.]

[The other one?]

[Nineteen years.  Three uses of service weapon.  Seven excessive force complaints, two invalidations.]

_ Great,  _ Kara thinks.   _ Good cop, awful cop. _

[Time to deploy Crystal Mountain?]

[Sixteen minutes for campus, ninety for city-wide.]

[Begin deploying, starting downtown.  Scion?]

[Tested and aligned.  Flight time to your position, ninety-four seconds at subsonic speed.  Point three-five seconds at top atmospheric cruise speed.]

[Flamebird?]

[Fabricated and stress-tested.  Barrier fields inside the weapons are stable and kinetic feedback systems are at one hundred percent.  Generator cores are spun up. Fully functional. Attaching the kit to Scion now.]

Kara breathes a sigh of relief.

[Lock transmat beacon on Nadia, target it to my dorm room.  Contact Alex and Eliza. Stand by to deploy Scion and Flamebird but do not drop camouflage on the facility.  Yet.]

[Kolex, if you detect his weapon chambering a round, transmat Nadia home and deploy Scion.  Top speed, weapons hot, set the armor to attach to me right after impact.]

The glyphs for ‘service’ and ‘honor’ appears in Kara’s vision.

“Can we go,” Nadia asks.  “Please?”

“Kara didn’t do anything,” she sobs.

"I won't back you up on this," the deputy warns his partner.

“Yeah, fine.  You two!  Get out of my sight.”

Kara blows out a long breath from now-sore lungs.  She had no idea she was holding it.  She didn't know holding her breath could  _hurt._

Neither she or Nadia move until the cruiser’s lights fade into the blackness.  Then Nadia slumps to the ground with a choked sob.

“Why did you do that, Kara?  He could have shot you. He could have shot me.  You may be bulletproof but you could have been found out.”

Kara sinks to the ground next to Nadia.

“Because it was right.  Because I would burn a thousand secret identities rather than let him treat you like that and act like it’s okay.”

“Take me home,” Nadia moans.  “and hold me.”

“Kolex,” Kara sighs.  “Two persons and a vehicle.  Initiate transmat.”

 

 

The dorm room materializes around them and Nadia bolts for the bathroom and starts retching loudly.  Winn looks blearily up from his pillow, probably woken by the flash.

“Uh, hi, Kara.  You...are not okay, are you?”

“Pulled over,” Kara sighs.  “Officer groped Nadia. She is pretty torn up.”

“I’m guessing you said something to him,” Winn yawns.

“Little bit, yeah.”

“You kill him?”

“What?  No!”

Winn sighs.

“Great.  I can make you some tea then,” he declares, getting out of bed in honest-to-god full length silk pajamas.  

Winn’s grandfather’s gold-rimmed glasses are in a lucite case by the bed--his only family heirloom--and a dog eared novel with a sticker from the book store is tucked under them.

“Winn, you are the best secretly gay grandfather a girl could ask for.”

“I try, buddy, I try.”

Nadia staggers out of the bathroom, wiping her mouth on her hand.

“Sorry about the transmat, Nadia.  First couple of times, it can make you queasy.  I just figured it was an instant, safe way home,” Kara admits.

“Smart call.  And I wasn’t barfing because of  _ that _ .”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.  Oh.”

“Where’s the car?”

“Parking itself in the garage downstairs.  It transmatted to the woods near the rec center where it can drive back without anyone noticing it doesn't have anyone in it.”

“Nice!” Winn calls from the mini-kitchen.

He brings Nadia tea first.

“Decaf,” he assures her with a peck on the cheek.

“Thanks,” she murmurs, jokingly pushing him away.  “Not sure I can sleep but thanks.”

His sweet-old-man routine has grown on her as much as it did Kara.

“Nadia, would you feel okay if I took a walk?  I need to get outside before I these feelings out.  Maybe yell at a few trees.” 

Nadia chews her lip.

“Go.  I’m safe here.  Do whatever and come back and hold me until morning.”

 

* * *

 

**March 19, 2006  | The People of National City**

National City, California

CatCo Plaza   
  
  


A giant trio of screens in the center of the plaza is displaying serene images of waterfalls with a small band of news headlines scrolling across the bottom.  People are milling around and children are napping in strollers. A live band is playing in the performance space.

All the TVs switch off at once, replaced by the civil defense logo.  Moments later, an armored figure appears in front of a collage of images.

“People of National City, you may know me as Black Knight.  If you are seeing this, you are watching a broadcast television in the National City Area.  Greetings. I am here tonight to tell you a story.” 

“Less than one hour ago, I was driving home with the woman I love when we were pulled over by the police for no greater crime than the color of our skin.  While the police verified that yes, the cash I had on me roughly corresponded to the presents I bought her for our anniversary and yes, in fact, the broken taillight they pulled us over for was completely fine…”

In a poorly-managed early warning bunker in the desert, Kara is doing everything she can to keep this message civil.

Shoppers and passersby have begun to gather, snapping photos with their phones.

“...one officer, a San Diego County Deputy named Harrold Flynt, saw fit to put his hand on my partner’s genitals under the pretense of a pat-down.  I challenged him on that behavior and he let us go. So imagine my surprise when I get home and check my phone and find that this boy...”

All of the images on screen change to a young boy, laughing at a playground, eating ice cream with his friends.

“...whose name is Stevie Nichols, was shot by the same deputy outside his home.  The officer told National City police who arrived that he thought this…”

Kara switches the image to the blood-stained drumstick found on the boy’s body.

“...was a gun.  My girlfriend is at home, vomiting in fear because this man...”

She switches it to a mugshot Kolex found of Deputy Flynt from a hushed-up DUI last year.

“...had his feelings hurt because she said no and I backed her up.”

“Far more importantly, a boy is dead.  Stevie was fourteen and he died at the scene.  For those of you lucky enough to be listening to this while white, let me tell you what I think happened.  Flynt felt that my girlfriend's body belonged to him, that her body was his to defile, to humiliate, to rape. A crime that so many black women have suffered at the hands of white men for four centuries in this country.”

“While we went home afraid and shaking, he went about his shift and found the first young black man he could find out at night doing anything remotely suspicious. In this case chatting with a friend after putting out the garbage.  He took it out on Stevie.”

“A mother lost her baby boy and the man who took that life has less than a one in fifty chance of being charged with a crime, let alone convicted.”

Kara sighs.

“So.  At this very moment a series of camera-equipped drones are fanning out over National City, covering all public streets, right of way, parks, and trails with 24-7 coverage of high resolution footage which will be available all times at this internet address.”

The address  **AndJusticeForAll.org** flashes on screen.  One of the drones decloaks and does a loop-de-loop for the crowd.

“Any inappropriate images will be pixelated in real-time by a computer but faces will remain visible at all times.  Consider this an experiment. What will the police do when there is nowhere, nowhere at all, left to hide their sins?  Will they improve? Will they keep each other honest, as Flynt’s partner was clearly trying to do when I met him? Or will they chase me down just because that is easier and simpler and more familiar?”

“Goodnight and God Bless.”

Kara turns away from the camera before thinking better of it.  She turns back to the camera.

“One more thing.  My real name…”

She removes her helmet and shakes out her hair, which she had Kolex braid and dye black.  Only a pair of tinted contact lenses and horn-rimmed glasses she grabbed at a drug store now separate Kara Danvers from Kara Zor-El and at the moment, she could care less.

Her armor powers up and the sigil fills the breastplate, glowing bright in the half-darkened broadcast shack.

“Is Kara Zor-El and I come from the planet Krypton.  I am the eldest member of the family and as such, I outrank Kal-El, who you all know as Superman.  I cared for him when he was only an infant and I love him more than anyone else in this world but perhaps his wife and children.  So before you dismiss this as the ramblings of some radical, some woman...take a good look at his favorite saying.”

“Truth, Justice, and the American Way.”

“Ask yourselves...was what happened to Stevie really justice?

The signal cuts out.

 

* * *

 

**That Very Moment**

Around the world

 

Alex Danvers spits out a mouthful of pasta and lets out a stream of breathless profanity.

 

In a cabin in Vermont, General Shay Mitchell’s phone rings on her bedside table and her wife shakes her.

 

A giant man-shark hybrid drops from the sky and into a backyard pool.  

“Sorry!” calls the alien carrying it.  

“Flash, look sharp!”  “Green Arrow, behind you!“  “Wonder Wo-never mind. He’s down.”

“What the hell, Supes?” all three of them holler at the clouds.

 

The White House switchboard starts ringing off the hook.

 

A woman in Chicago sets down her novel, looks at the TV, and texts her husband.

 

A reporter named Lois Lane turns her youngest daughter towards the television while she washes the dishes.

“Look at your cousin Kara!  See how brave and stupid she is?”

She reaches for the remote and shuts it off.

“Not bad, Short Stack.  Not bad at all. Smallville is going to fuckin’ love this one.  Yes sweetie, mommy said a bad word. Strong women do that sometimes because no one has the right to censor them.  Yes we do!  Yes we do!”

Arms outstretched towards her mother, Lara Kent-Lane babbles happily. 

“Ma-ma!” Lara squeals.

Her older sister Alura spits out part of a cookie, pointing at the baby.

“It talks?” 

 


	9. MULTIVERSE AFTER DARK:  An Explicit Adventure (Part 1, F/F & F/F/F)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smuttiness. I have a thing for feedback here! These are the labs. In the future I'll sweep back through the main chapters using your suggestions from here and smut them right the hell up. 
> 
> Please comment if you have:
> 
> a turn-on  
> a need to fan yourself because something was good and we should have more of it  
> a suggestion for future chapters (the chandler is always an option)
> 
> a turnoff  
> a just ate-sour-candy face because something was not your thing  
> a need to point out that that is not physically possible  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am breaking my explicit chapters up into categories by genders involved (see parentheticals). My Cards Against Humanities group has some great WLW ladies who'd really rather not think about certain shapes and parts so I'm using this as sort of a trigger warning.
> 
> These will involve characters we have seen before or haven't but will see again and will not move the ball forward plot/conflict wise so they can be skipped if desired.
> 
> TRIVIA #1: The "Melsha" character is what the Kryptonian played by the current SG actress (Melissa Benoist, cuz I'm super creative about names for fourth-string characters!) ended up doing in this universe: Glee club in spaaaaaaace! She may or may not sing for us...I haven't decided.
> 
> TRIVIA #2: Some of these characters will later get up to hijinks with Astra, Non, Indigo, a layer cake, a prison shower, a prison **riot** , a riding mower and a hickory bush...and possibly more. Though not all in one hijink. Stay tuned for all that to play out.
> 
> TRIVIA #3: These characters (Prospecta, Silver, Yrael, Alt!Sara, Anyr) are cameo characters here but will be central in a separate, more magically-leaning and somewhat grimdark (but still funny) story in my mutated version of the DC/Vertigo Comics-verse that will happen at some point as this starts one to wrap up, unless the authorities have me locked up first! 
> 
> TRIVIA #4: Alt!Sara/Vampire!Sara and her friends could also pop up anywhere it might make things l really awkward for the Legends.

  **Time-Dilated Space | Anyr’Vathara ("The Crimson Hammer" in Apokoliptian)**  
  
Skeleton of An Omega Titan   
  
"Mercy and Charity" - The Palace of the Courtesans of the Three-Fold Path

 

 

Anyr stares at the crystal panels of the main display where the skull of the dead titan looms in front of the ship’s prow.  In the center of its massive forehead is a gash cracked into the bone by the weapon of a creature older and more powerful than this cosmos.  A pair of blue dwarf stars slowly swirl around the crack in the bone like small fish cleaning a leviathan’s corpse.

“Take us in, slow and steady.”

The parademon at the helm screeches his assent, clacking his bony mandibles.

She sighs.

“No, Tok, you can’t come with me.  Nothing there for you,” she chuckles.  “And you tend to spook the pretty ones.  Last time you just drank and made sad noises at all the Helgrammite girls, remember?”

His wings rattle on his carapace and he growls, turning back to the controls.

The spotlights on the _Deathblow’s_ outer hull sweep the surface of the skull as Tok rolls her hull nimbly to the side in to match the angle of the crack.

Bone made of dust from neutron stars flashes past the viewport as the ship clears the sides.  Narrowly. Any bigger and she couldn’t get in.

Inside the skull, light glitters and sparkles in every direction, painting the braincase’s jet-black inner lining with white and yellow light.  In the center of the space hangs the pale remnants of the beast’s crystalline heart, decorated with an ocean gaudy teal lights and studded with a ring of landing pads around the middle.  

Tok slows as he passes Daxamite and Coluan warships, raxxie trading leviathans and helg cargo haulers bearing the logos of galaxy-spanning corporations.   _Deathblow_ dwarfs them all.  Nothing remotely compares save for a golden-and-scarlet Thessalian dreadnought orbiting high over the station with her cooling fins deployed and even she could lay lengthwise across the central hull with half the width to spare.

_The crew of the Golden Sister must have earned some shore leave._

Anyr rubs the scar in her skinsuit.

_For such a backwater cesspool, Earth is always more trouble than it is worth._

She lifts her hand of the armrest of her throne and the control rod she had made out of the skull of the last bounty hunter her family dared send.  Pompous little Thessalian cunt named Shetala who thought a black hole to the guts would be enough to kill her. It’s been a long time since that fight but bad first impressions outlast planets, Anyr has learned.  The second-to-last bounty hunter's skull and spine decorate the other side of the sprawling couch.

She jerks her glove back over the wound.  Her armored alter ego needs to feed and do it soon or that burn will be permanent and Shadow so likes to keep her softer inner scales pretty.  As for Anyr’s own hand, it’s suffered far worse tortures at the hands of father dearest.

Hopefully old Prospecta still keeps a cube of Shadow’s favorite meat on ice.

“First mate Tor-Vonn, you have the ship.  No one is to follow me for at least two rotations.   I will have a cache of tokens sent up when I’ve had my fill.  Any man among us breaks Prospecta’s laws and he dies on my knives before her feet.   _Slowly_ and in _exquisite_ pain.  Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

The rakish Daxamite nods his head and gives her a smirk that flashes snow-white teeth and takes the smaller chair which sits in front of hers.  

No one...no one...except her takes her throne on this ship.

Two rotations is three times as long as she’s spent here since she’s known him and he knows it.

“Perfectly.  I await those tokens with baited breath, might I add.  We’ll keep the ship steady and strong for you, empress.”

_Empress.  Like the sound of that._

Most of the planets and starports they’ve raided paid up or chose to fight and were taught their manners.  Some provided her titles, mockingly, in hopes of lightening their tribute.

The independent colony they just hit in Davarr declared her “Empress and Protector” after _Deathblow_ slagged a flotilla of Daxamite slavers who arrived posing as prospectors.   Slaughtering any crew foolish enough to try to double-orbit with her own is just helping out the process of evolution, she told him.  Apparently the colonial president was deadly serious and she is to report for a gala marking the re-opening of parliament in a few months.

She checks the cinch of the blood-dyed trophy sash around her waist, sheathes her favorite blades on her thighs and brushes back Shadow’s long mane of jointed scales.

As she walks towards the hangar bays, criminals of every race in the stars bow and dip and curtsey such as their anatomy allows.

Outside that bridge--no, anywhere outside her own head--she is The Crimson Hammer.  

“Milady,” purrs a Kryptonian female with a scandalously modified officer’s tunic.  That is one of her raiders, Tilnyr, if she remembers right. A born killer too cruel to give up the life on her emperor's command and too passionate to spend a night alone.

“Crimson Hammer,” hisses a Helgrammite sentry with pitted scales.

Thessalian triplets guard the door, violet skinned and cold-eyed.  The Tolak sisters are leaning against the plating with a hand on their rifles and another idly splayed across their uniforms, just below the ammo belts.  It’s not shyness that makes them cover their mounds with their palms, it’s to hint at what bliss lurks just under their uniforms to whoever might join them after their rotation.

“My liege.”

“My liege.”

“Radiant and fearsome as ever, my liege.”

Her private cutter--a Coluan-built lovely with a slender outline and knife-sharp forward hull--sits front and center.   _Foehammer’s_ glassy hull shifts, a ripple moving up the spine as the cubes making it up course with lightning as she thinks about something.

"Hello again, my old friend."

Surrounding it are the parademon’s swarm fighters, two full squadrons of Helgrammite corvettes with hardened ramming prows and in the shadows by the repair shop, pair of ultra-heavy Helg freighters that Haaj, her chief engineer, rigged as artillery and troop transports. Each one was rebuilt with neutron-layered armor, hundreds of singularity emitters, missile tubes and plasma turrets hidden in the bow along with ten massive engines each.  Heavily fortified colonies have begged surrender at the sight of those monsters entering high orbit with fangs bared. More than one convoy has regretted letting the “Hammer’s Spikes” fall in with their escorts.

Haaj has always had a knack for repurposing his kind’s commercial ships into well disguised instruments of death and fear.  It’s why she pays him so much.

The belly of _Foehammer_ yawns open, plating rolling out of her way and a ramp of dark plates descending to the deck.

She takes in the throne at the front by the controls, a mountain of Thessalian silk cushions, a  rotating chamber of chilled liquors and sweetest of all, a weapon rack with all her most exotic and vicious children neatly clipped to their cradles.  

 _Home._  This small, wall-less space may lack for privacy and for majesty compared to her quarters on the _Deathblow_ but not for comfort.  It will always be her first and favorite home.

Turquoise raises his scaly blue head from the perch and shrieks a greeting, heated gas pouring from his throat and blazing on contact with oxygen.  He drops off the petrified corpse of the gnarled ashwood sapling behind her throne and flaps over to alight on Anyr’s shoulder before curling around her neck like a scaly, fire-breathing scarf.

“Pretty boy,” Anyr teases, scratching the spines between his wings.

“Shall we go have some fun?”

He roars his loudest, ringing of every hard surface in the cockpit.

“Crimson Hammer to tower.  I am spinning up and leaving.”

This is _her_ nation.  Thieves, trickers, seductresses, rakes, killers and lunatics all...yet even so it is not their place to tell her what to do.  The control tower knows it. Clearance is for her soldiers.

“As you will, Empress.  May you sail glittering stars on easy winds.”

 _Foehammer_ sorts her hull crystals, pulling back the spars that had held her to the deck.  She clears the mouth of the hangar and enters a tight dive towards the landing platforms.  

Anyr has half a light-year left to travel and far less patience than that.  

This bloodlust that grew and grew on the battlefield before settling between her legs as a ball of seething and searing _emptiness_ will not wait to be slaked.  The dead weight in her mind--this curious sense of despair--may kill her before long.

[Jump.]

[As you wish, Anyr.]

Privileged by their long friendship _Foehammer_ has been allowed to learn her true name.  Anyr has more fingers than confidants but this ships Logic Engine is among them.

[Anyr?  How very irreverent, old friend.]

[I learn from the best.]

The pad appears below them in a flash of blue and a burst of hard radiation bombards the deck crew and plating alike.

They’ll live.  After all, Prospecta employs no weaklings.

The greeter at the other side of the airlock is a human, of all things, a tawny-skinned droplet of fleshy curves and dusky lips.

“Welcome to Mercy and Charity,” she says with a flourished quarter bow.  “We pride ourselves on being a house of ill repute but with an immaculate reputation.”

“Anything new on offer?” Anyr asks.

She will be very surprised if any of the myriad whores, concubines, cock-swingers and sluts wandering this place’s halls catch her eye but she might as well ask.  Something in her gut tells her where she will end up: the citadel itself, standing before Prospecta’s chamber door with shaking hands and her heart pounding.

“We have added humans and a few Oans since last you were here.”

Anyr’s hand drift to her thigh, fingers curling in the air over the hilt.  She doesn’t like being recognized by strangers. If this whelp tries anything, she won’t live long enough to realize that Anyr moved.  A pity to spill blood in Prospecta’s house but not unheard of.

“We have a sketch of all our most frequent and respected visitors,” the girl explains, sliding a stone tablet with Anyr’s face on it across her podium.

She knows who carved it.  No one but Prospecta ever praised her eyes or the scar above them.  Anyr closes the clasp on the sheath and relaxes her hand.

“Truth be told,” Anyr jokes, “I’m not sure I could forgive myself if I fucked an Oan, rebel or otherwise.  What if the Guardians' ego is contagious?”

The girl chortles.

“Terrifying thought.  You have discerning taste.”

_You have no idea, little one._

“Get me to citadel,” Anyr decides, flipping a ten-solar coin towards the podium.

“You would have had it for a smile.  Transmat or a floater?”

It has been too long since she hung under a floater, in that bubble of anesthetic, dark, senseless _calm_ that they somehow secrete.

“Do you have a fast one?  I would like to be there by morning.”

“Several,” the girl replies, tilting her head towards a vat filled with several of the slick-skinned beasts slowly flapping their fleshy wings.

“That’ll do.  When I leave, I will be needing a cache of tokens for my crew.  A half million should do.”

The girl raises her eyebrow but to her credit says nothing.  No one with a desire to live would claim to be able to afford that if they couldn’t.  Prospecta has millions of subjects here and none of them are meaningless.  Workers settle here, desparate for the life but safe knowing her corps of guards will protect them from cheats, rude clients and those who cannot keep their hands to themselves.  She charges her customers accordingly.

Drink and flesh and song...the only thing a pirate thinks about when their blood is up after a fight.

“Excellent.  I will have a chest ready.”

Anyr approaches the vat and reaches through the membrane to pet the nearest creature.

“Hello, beautiful.  Do you know the way?”

A long, mournful bellow replies.

“Good.”

Anyr dives into the tank.  Her coat leaves a slick of grime, soot and blood at the surface.  The distilled suffering of hundreds of men who thought to kill her during the last raid.

She can wash when she arrives, perhaps share the water with this new acolyte that Prospecta’s last message teased her about.

The floater curls around her, hundreds of fleshy tendrils cocooning her under the beast’s fragrant belly.  The sedative rich fluid slowly fills the sack while its wings beat against the solar wind as it soars. Anyr lets herself pretend that the soft flesh wrapped around her is her mother’s arms and that the drowsy dark surrounding her is a tomb.  No more nightmares. No more rage.

_One day soon, Mother.  I will make it right._

She is lulled to sleep within a few heartbeats.

 

 

Anyr comes to on a couch outside the citadel’s inner walls.  A nude Thessalian is crouching on the back of the couch, watching her curiously.  She acts like a bird, watching some curious beast she has never seen. The shiny slit between her legs, tensed-up scales on her breasts and the widened curve of her serpentine pupils suggest that what is really going on is she’s trying to get another customer before the buzz from the last one fades.

“Hello, gorgeous.”

“Hello,” the whore purrs.  “Tall dark and _scaly_.  I’ve never seen a scale-suit before.  They’re really rare. I wonder do...do those scales open where it counts?  What would those scales would feel like clamped around my cheeks while I sucked you dry?”

She opens her palm and raises an eyebrow.

_Above average pitch._

The bag of titanium-plated tokens hanging on Anyr’s belt somehow feels much too heavy.  All she would have to do is place one in this one’s hand and pull her onto the couch...maybe two or three.  The lady knows how to wield her still-blown eyes and freshly-used body.

Anyr holds up two fingers and the whore shakes her head, holding up four.  At Prospecta’s current rate, that’s enough to buy a used freighter.

“Black,” the Thessalian whispers.  

_Black....not silver or red.  Pricey._

“Four black coins.  Quality, huh?”

A proud grin splits her new friend’s face.

Anyr jingles four tokens into her palm and hands them over.

“Do not...move...a muscle,” she growls at the whore.  That’s what she is. Sex on two legs. Practical, unashamed, dirty-talking.  Neither ceremony nor pretense. Pure and honest.

Anyr pulls the scarf from its loop on her belt and loops it around the girl’s throat before pulling it away.

“Lift your hand.  No, not the one with the coins,” she scolds.  “I know the law. You don’t like it, just drop the coins and I’ll double your fee and walk away.”

The girl lifts her other arm.  “Put your arm inside the scarf.”  She complies and Anyr twists the fabric into a knot around the girl's upraised arm and around her head at the eyes like a loose blindfold.  She throws the other around a nearby lamp post and weights it with one of her knives.

“Too tight?”

“No.”

Anyr leans close, pulling the blindfold down.

“That scarf was given to me by my father when I came of age.  His name is Darkseid. It was white as snow when I got it. Every speck of color is one drop of blood, the last drop the victim ever shed.  Every bit of color is a fighter that I respected or a general I defeated.”

“Do you think I’m boasting?  Tell me the truth. No penalty except for lying.  Might give your crests a nip for that.”

“No,” the whore realizes.  “You’re not.”

“Smart lady.  Then he betrayed my mother.  That last bit of white at the corner?”

The Thessalian’s eyes track up to one untainted fringe in a speckled sea of crimson, copper, emerald, indigo and black stains.

“That is where I will dip it in _his_ blood.”

Her plaything shivers and Anyr’s fingers tiptoe up her ribs and flick her stiff nipples.

“But I would never hurt one like you.  Here’s I think what will happen. I will rub you down until you’re nice and calm.  Then I will run my fingers,” she threatens, dragging the broad nails of the scalesuit across the ridges surrounding the spine.  “Down.”

Anyr cups the whore’s mound and flicks the swollen, soaked lips.  A moan rises in her captive’s slender throat and she clamps her hand over the mouth to catch it.

“And the other hand goes....all the way up.”

She flicks the tip of one of the crests and the whore squeezes her thighs together.  Hard.

“I’ll put my fingers inside you and under those pretty little crests of yours and rub.  Slowly, slowly, slowly, until you’re hoarse from screaming.”

“Then I’ll pull my scarf off and walk away.  Sound good?”

“Y-y-yes,” the whore stammers, head slumping as far as the scarf allows.

Anyr tightens the knot on the blindfold. “I think so too.” She starts her feast with thumbs on the ridges at the base of the spine, where the the backbone juts out and makes a mountain range of bony knobs and springy flesh.  She presses firmly and drags up to the edge of the next band of muscles. A faint sheen of white sand stains her fingers, milked from under the skin.

“Too much?” she whispers.

The whore laughs.

“After I finished off a Coluan?  Then got in trouble with _you?_  No.    _Harder_.  I might be sore tomorrow otherwise.”

“Your wish,” Anyr breathes, adding more fingers and leaning in to it.  “Is my command.”

Anyr may kill for thrill, business and or sheer boredom but she’s not one to reject a massage from either side of the bargain.  She strokes the lowest band of muscle one, two, three more times until she feels the locking of the whore’s knees ease and her arms relax in Anyr’s grip.

“That good?”

“I want to keep you chained to my bed,” her playmate groans.  “Roll over and slide under your hands whenever I have a bad day.”

“So it was good?”

“Yes.”

“Eight bands to go,” Anyr whispers.

She gives the next muscle two quick, hard sweeps of her fingers and is rewarded with a sucking gulp, the sound of a woman desperate for air.  By the time she reaches the last three bands along the shoulder blades, she’s massaging a stream of _water_ more than a living being.  The whore’s body is slack, hanging with nothing but the scarf looped over a lamppost to support her weight.

“Black preserve me…” she rasps.  “Enough.”

Anyr loops an arm around the whore’s breasts and pulls her close with a flex of sinew and a scrape of scales.

“You sure?  Once I start, you’re not going to be able to talk.”

“Don’t care.”

Slipping two fingers in is effortless once Anyr follows the slick trail of droplets that reach her playmate’s knees.  The whore bears down and smooth muscles cinch tight, nearly stopping Anyr’s invasion entirely.

“Mmm.  I thought you were going to push me?” comes a taunting whisper.

Anyr scissors one finger back and one forward, knowing that she found a tender spot on the closer side when knees buckle and she has to catch the scarf before knees hit stone.  She turns her hand so she can focus on it and a strangled yelp escapes the whore’s lips and juices drip onto her palm. Anyr pulls her hand out and licks her reward off her fingers.

“I will.  I just don’t want to cause you pain.”

“Another.  Now!”

Anyr laughs and complies with a single thrust that takes her in to the knuckles.  She curls and rubs and pumps her fingers and the whore’s plump ass wriggles against her pants, smearing her shine on the leather.  Every instinct is to get closer, to follow the crooked fingers that beckon so pleasantly.

“Ready for more?”

The tips of the crests flex, beckoning to her tongue.  

“I’ll marry you if you do it right now,” the whore jokes.  “Kill you if you don’t.”

“Tsk-tsk-tsk.  So rude.”

Anyr takes the tip of the crest in her teeth.  No pressure, just the presence and scrape of teeth on the scales.  

“I can do rough.”

“Can you?” Anyr laughs.

“Hmm.  But not from you.  You’re too sweet.”

_Something I am rarely accused of._

“Slow.  Drag it out.  Lift me and crown me until I can’t stand and leave me on the couch.”

A lash of the tongue loosens the crest and its neighbors twitch.  Anyr wets her fingers and shimmies them under, trying to be gentle as wisp of smoke.  The tougher skin on the crest’s underside contracts gleefully and the tender, sticky mess of raw nerves shivers on the top of the skull.  She moves her fingers in lazy, tiny circles.

Anyr takes the tip of another crest in her teeth and squeezes. Every muscle the whore has tenses and she lets out a scream.  A ripple rises up each band of muscle on the back and slick muscle cinches almost painfully on Anyr’s fingers while a splash of juices runs down her hand and wrist.  

The whore sags, coins spilling from her palm and clanging on the pavement.  

Anyr unwinds the scarf and catches the girl.

“Was that too much?” she asks.

No answer.  She checks the vitals.  Pulse. Strong and racing.  Breathing. Ragged but deep.

Anyr falls back on to the stones, more ashamed than she has ever been after killing someone.  No one has dropped their coins or rejected them -- and thus rejected her -- after the fact. Not once in decades she must have spent on this station over the eons...a few days at a time.

She toggles her communicator.

“Tar-Vonn.  I need the Tolak sisters to my position.  Now.”

“I will order them to myself.  If someone asks?” he hints.

_If someone asks why they’re allowed here and no one else._

“If someone asks, tell them I want three tongues in me on the double.  That’s your problem.”

“I’ll come up with something more colorful.  They’re on their way.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you said that.”

_Ass.  I’ll get him for that._

Anyr shuts off the communicator, squeezing the button so hard the casing whines.

It feels like eternity before she hears the transmat field growing behind her.  The whore squints against the blazing white of the flash but doesn’t open her eyes.

“What do you need, your grace?” Jala asks, slinging her rifle across her back dropping to her knees beside Anyr.  Her sisters take up positions to either side, scanning the courtyard with their targeting visors.

“I think I hurt her.”

“No,” the whore rasps, running her tongue over her puffy lips.  “I loved the fear...being a killer's plaything. It was intense. I passed out. I didn’t think that would happen or I would have added a rule for it to our little game.”

“You dropped the coins.”

“You try holding onto a fistful of coins when you pass out.”

She laughs and soon Anyr is laughing too.  Jala smacks Anyr on the shoulder.

“She’s good, no?” she asks the whore, jerking her head at Anyr.  “Perk of the job. It used to be, at least.”

“What’s your name, gem?” the whore asks Jala.

_Gem...guess our Thessalian has a fetish for the purple ones._

“Jala Tolak.  What’s yours?”

“Lyra.”

Jala looks pleadingly at Anyr.

“Ask her, not me.  Lyra, these three are my best snipers and medics.  Jala, Mirn, and Sashi Tolak. No one else I trust more to get me out of a bad spot.  Can they walk you home?”

Lyra pushes herself up halfway.

“Wives or sisters?” she asks, glancing between the three.  The tattoos on her face flex adorably as she crinkles her brow.

“Sisters.  We’re pirates,” Jala jokes.  “We do naughty things. But we’re close.  We do them together.”

“They can walk me home as long as they give me a bath when we get there.  Thirty tokens.”

“For a bath?”

Lyra rolls her eyes.

“Yes. Absolutely.  It will be quite the bath.”

Anyr hands twelve tokens each to the Tolak sisters and adds eight for her fare.  Tipping is well deserved in Lyra’s case.

Lyra wobbles to her feet and Jala helps her steady herself.

“Well, ladies?” Lyra asks.

"I'm in," Jala decides.  "You two?"

"You kidding?  You take point and I will _fight you_ if you want rear guard," Sashi jokes.  "Nicer view."

 

 **[ INCOMING TRANSMISSION:  CODEX ---** **  
** **Due to their asexual reproductive system which makes inbreeding impossible and a long history of extremely tight-knit multiple partner families, the incest taboo lacks a biological imperative and nudity in close proximity to similar-age members is rarely  avoidable except for the upper class. As such, the incest taboo is less strong in Thessalian culture. It remains but it is comparable to an extremely embarrassing fetish as opposed to an actual pathology needing intervention and treatment.**

**\--- Dr. Tanka Vox-Queryl  ]**

 

Anyr takes the remaining steps to the Sanctum at a jog.  The door guards start to shift closer to each other but she whips off her left glove and brandishes her burned palm.  Weapons lowered and smiles wide, they step aside for her.

“Is that a burn from the Infinity Wall?  Never thought I’d see that on someone living,” one mutters to his friend.

“Worse.  Burn from sticking her hand on the other side,” his comrade replies, getting a low whistle.  “Story is that her worship told her to do it. Crimson Hammer’s a bit tougher than you, Drack.”

A smile tugs upward at her lips before Anyr steps inside.  Always nice to be known and feared.

Thumping Thessalian singularity percussion and mellow Rakni-Xinda chorals tickle her ears, one band playing on each side.  She sighs and takes the flute of Rak’s Salt ale from the server. Smoky, salty and more than a slight dose of neurotoxin. Someone must have radioed the staff because that’s not a common beverage, especially as a favorite.

“Welcome back, Crimson Hammer.”

“Glad to be back,” she grins, placing the drained flute back in the server’s hand.

Like she always does, Anyr walks the edges of the room to take in the show.

On the lower platform near the Thessalian band is a huge tank of oxygenated liquid, a dozen couples of various species are writhing around a bubble in the center.  They thrust and arch and entwine in hopes of enticing the Thessalian in the center to pick them. Nothing more than animal instinct...all these couples competing for the honor of a desirable mate.  She turns her white-scaled head this way and that before kicking off towards what looks like a middle aged human couple. Plunging her hands through the bubble, she drags the wife in face first, never taking her lips off her.   Grabbing the husband’s hand, she pulls him in too, forces his head into his wife’s lap and pulls the wife’s face in between her own legs. The crowd claps and one by one, the losing competitors finish each other and swim away.

On the platform nearest the bar is a trio of raxxie dancers, male and females, strutting and beckoning and preening their assets, making full use of their abundance of long and powerful fingers.

Prospecta’s office is still at the back and her chambers probably are too.

Anyr settles in to a lavish waiting area more suited to a galactic conglomerate than a pleasure palace.  Keeping her company are two humans: a tall, broad shouldered female with long dark blonde hair cast back over her suit jacket and a fidgety, dark skinned male who seems at turns terrified and aroused by her.

Having not yet had the pleasure of meeting a human who was not a criminal, a Nazi or a zombie from some trash-hole universe’s Earth, she takes a seat near them.

“One dance, boss.  Take your mind off.”

“Gary,” the woman practically growls.  “We’re here to get information on a case, nothing more.”

“Rip isn’t getting any farther away while you sit here miserable, Director Sharpe.  She would give you that information quite happily,” he suggests, pointing to a snappily dressed, golden-skinned raxxie leaning against the bar with all four of her hands behind her head.

“Go wait on the ship, now.”

The fidgety male human leaves.

“I’m not cheating on Sara, we’re just on a break.  I’m not cheating on Sara, we’re just on a break. I’m not che-”

That woman needs to either demand whatever information she came here to purchase and leave or take whatever the raxxie offers.

Anyr has heard enough of that looping failure of willpower so she gets up and moves to the bar.  

“Hey,” sniffles the woman beside her.

“Hey.”

“I’m Melsha.”

“Crimson Hammer.”

Her companion laughs sourly.

“Your mother must have _really_ wanted you to go into the Military Guild,” she mutters, draining what is apparently one of far too many Tamarean Fireballs.  “Give you a name like that.”

“Let me guess…you’re a...Kryptonian,” Anyr decides.  “I know that because you smell _amazing._ Like the moment after a lightning storm.”

Her drinking companion turns her head, causing a halo of golden curls to bounce around her shoulders and back.  Blue eyes like cold oceans meet Anyr’s own.

“Apokoliptian?” she asks.  “That’s a sssh-scha-scale suit,” she slurs.  “And you’re wearing it,” she observes stupidly.

“Yeah,” Anyr admits after downing another Rak Salt. “Not my favorite thing about myself, truth be told.”

“What’s your favorite thing?”

“Piracy.  Adventure.  Angering my father.  Coming to a place like this with money and things stolen from said piracy.  Meeting pretty girls.”

“Huh,” Melsha mumbles, her eyebrows making an adorable crease.  “I like it quiet. Simple. Good meal at home with my husband Mon.  I used to be a singer.”

“Used to be?  Lose your voice?”

“No,” she sighs.  “No one left to sing for.  I was Entertainer’s Guild. I was a freighter brat but I sent a sample in and I was good so House Ina-Zenn brought me into their honor guard’s band.”

“Singing for the War Queens of Juru Valley?” Anyr teases.  “The galaxy is filled with nastier, dirtier and meaner work than that, cutie.”

“It was good work.  After a while, they took me in formally and shared my singing with other houses.  House El. House Zod. That’s a tense room for a hymnal.”

A flicker of mirth lights her eyes, just for an instant, and Anyr feels much better about her deeds since she randomly selected a barstool.

“I once did a vocalist’s competition between the two and I won but Zod picked me for their champion so I actually felt bad about it.  I was actually here on vacation. I had a lot of it. General Astra authorized it before her arrest. So...I just found out about Krypton.”

“Fire and Stone,” Anyr mutters.  “You didn’t know because time passes slower here.”

"To Krypton!" Melsha lifts her drink, a fresh Fireball that she really has no business holding.

“No news but what people bring with them and I didn’t think to ask.  Know anything about what happened.?”

“It was forty years ago.  More.  Bits and pieces. Mining disaster.  There’s rumors about some kind of conspiracy by the Guardians but zero proof and people don’t generally round up Green Lanterns to start breaking fingers.  Not without more than a hunch. No idea whether it’s true.”

“Any survivors?”

“Officially?  Not from the planet.  Couple freighters that turned away.  Patrol ships that fled before the star went nova.  Daxamites grabbed everything that flew and formed a refugee flotilla.  It got clobbered a couple systems later but the survivors stuck together.  Looking for a new planet, I guess.”

“Vhoc’s rotting hole!” Melsha hollers.  “They’re alive but we’re all gone?”

“Not all.  Funny thing about pirates.  We spend a lot of time on barstools.  We hear things. Three nights ago I heard a couple of mercs talking about a contract for a revenge killing.  Apparently the King of Daxam thinks his son’s ship was attacked by Kryptonian vessels fleeing the disaster.”

“Thought there weren’t any.”

“No one’s sure.  Small ships could have slipped out at the last minute.  The contract was on Kara Zor-El and her cousin so and it was for twenty million solar crowns.  Someone thinks she’s alive and will buy a star system for whoever kills her.”

“You take the contract?”

“I’m a pirate, not a hired killer.  I don’t take contracts, either. I do what I want, when and where I want.  Who I want, if they’re in the mood. Thinking of tagging along just to hunt them down.  My crew hasn’t smelled vacuum-frozen blood in a while. They get cranky without a space battle.”

“Let your crew have some fun.  Make sure they don’t make it to her.  She’s good--Kara is--kind. Even to rim-rats like me.  I remember singing for the House of El’s celebration of her birth.  Gorgeous little girl. She was twelve cycles and I was almost seventeen.   Never been so jealous of another woman’s good looks. Her skin was dark, nearly purple--like Agyte dust--and her hair was amazing.  Like a river of melted platinum.”

“If it’s true, go to Earth and look her up.  See if you can re-enter her service.”

“Earth?  Which one?  I get here and I learn there’s a universe that succumbed to every terrible problem I can imagine and a new terrible problem for every universe still standing.”

“Earth-38.  If you want passage, it could be arranged.  Say, four hundred solars?”

Melsha works her jaw back and forth, her blue eyes fixed on something far, far away.

“Let me think about it.  Maybe my husband can talk me into it.  Which berth?”

“None of them, you'll need to take a pod.  Deathblow a stolen Starbreaker so she’s a big girl.  Too big to fit.  Black and red.  Don’t look for Darkseid’s face though.  I painted over it with a black star, warhammer and a two claw marks.  Can’t miss it.”

“Thanks.  I should probably get back to Monny.  He worries when I drink when I’m sad.”

One of Prospecta’s guards comes up behind Anyr and taps gently on the shoulder.

“Her Worship will see you now.”

“Lead the way to paradise,” Anyr replies, dropping off the stool.

She suspect that she’ll be on her knees with her tongue out the instant she sees Prospecta but there are far, far worse things to lust after and nothing more amazing, unique or powerful in the multiverse or beyond it.  

_I would spend my life collared on a chain as long as she held the other end._

Goddesses are hard to come by and far harder to get in her bed.

The guard leads her up the rear stairway towards the private offices and five more fall in behind her.  They wear stenciled outlines of the titan’s dead heart on their breastplates with the crossed staves superimposed.  These are Prospecta’s personal guard, her best.

One day they might be working the floors as courtesans and keeping the peace the next.  Not much escapes them because they know what a threat looks like from either side of a token.

“I’ll behave myself,” Anyr jokes.  “Pirate’s honor.”

“You behaving yourself is something I believe when I see it,” the sturdy Helgrammite next to her scoffs, his mandibles flapping.  “But this isn’t because of you. Her Worship has an...unruly visitor at the moment.”

“Can I kill it?” Aynr coos.  “I give good murder.”

The raxxie woman leading the squad groans, sounding more like a rattle than anything against all those teeth.

“Hammer, I had just managed to forget how bad your jokes are. so thanks for that  Just have a seat and follow her worship’s lead, please.”

“With pleasure.”

They push open the offices doors.  

 _There she is,_ Anyr thinks, her head less empty and her blood warming up in her veins.  Soothing just to lay eyes on her.

Prospecta is slouched on one of her obscenely pillowed chairs, her bare feet cupping the shoulder-blades of a spectrally pale blonde crouched naked between her legs.  Her goddess’ silk robes are pulled down over her playmate's face and neck but the hair swishes slightly and the most tender-sounding suckling and moaning reaches Anyr’s ears.  

Even with such a distraction, a grin splits Prospecta’s obsidian lips when she sees Anyr.

A kiss is blown her way and Anyr catches it, pretends to swallow it and returns the favor. Prospecta laughs and it is music and the babbling of a mountain stream and brings memories of the sound of every happy thing Anyr still remembers.

“My newest and best pupil,” Prospecta declares, puffing up proudly.  “Serah.  You’ll love her. She’s nearly done with her rites. I was hoping you might do her the honor.”

Golden hands lit from within reach out and grab the girls head through the silks of her robes and pushes her away.  A small whine of disappointment comes from under the skirt.

“That is my best client.  The Crimson Hammer herself.  I think you will get along qui-”

A truly rude sucking noise between her legs delays Prospecta’s formal introductions for the time being.  Clearly the ‘best pupil’ did well because she enjoys her studies.

“Best indeed,” she purrs, leaning back.

“Before the pleasure,” she sighs, fixing the twin white infernos of her eyes on Anyr.  “The business. You have it?”

Anyr reaches into her leathers’ front pocket and pulls out a crude stone amulet that shivers and shudders and glows with a purple heat from within.

“Love,” Prospecta observes.  “You found the derivation for the Love Equation?”

“Anything for you, my friend.”

“Where?”

“Peace of the Black orphanage, as it turned out.  It was on the Thessalian-Daxamite border and it cared mostly for slave raid orphans, I think.  There was a Coluan monk there, recent initiate. He had been desperate to reach a little boy. Fell into a trance, nearly killed himself thinking about it, solved it.  I offered him both payment and protection for giving me the amulet. He didn't reply.  He didn’t even look up. He picked up a sobbing thessi girl and shushed her. Walked away.”

Prospecta’s lips curl slowly into a smirk.  She holds out her palm for the amulet and Anyr lays it down, managing to kiss the tips of three fingers before Prospecta pulls back with a laugh.

“Love for a child.  Nothing simpler or fiercer.   I’m not surprised you found it there.  I think he had what he needed and the amulet was a trinket to him.  Not everyone is so bold and brave as you or me. If he dies because he gave it up, he dies and I suspect he is long since at peace with it.”

Snapping the chain at each end, Prospecta places the stone on her tongue and swallows it.  The white flames of her eyes flash crimson for an instant before turning the dark violet of a Thessalian bruise-rose.  They remain that succulent color that keeps calling to Anyr’s lips.

Prospecta must must have the other six derivations, the entire Life Equation.  Anyr brought her four others. 

The fire of her eyes never shifted back as they always did before.

“You were carrying that on your person?” Prospecta asks.  

She smacks her lips loudly and reaches for the nearest flute of wine.

Anyr nods. “Where?”

Anyr pats the pocket.

“You poor thing!  I know how you get when you think of me and that you want more than a night or two with me.  You’ve spent weeks with the glory, the madness and the emptiness of love no more than a finger’s length from your sex?” Prospecta teases.  “Surprised you didn’t come in here with a cart full of wildflowers and your still-beating heart in your hand.”

 _That explains the despair and the hollowness._  Anyr realizes.   _It was a gift for her and I want her to..lno.  That’s all. I want her. With me, near me._

 _Pirate in love.  No way that ends in anything but humiliation,_ she warns herself.

“Help me deal with this moron next door and we can spend as long as you like deciding what’s next for us.”

Anyr’s heart stops for at least five beats.  “I like the sound of ‘us’,” she murmurs.

Prospecta starts to stand, grimaces and hisses in pain.  Anyr lunges towards her, a hand on a knife and her mind reaching out for Splitter, beckoning the warhammer from the polluted dimension it slumbers in.

“No,” Prospecta hisses.  “It’s fine.”

She looks down at the lump of her pupils head under her dress.

“I told you, Serah,” she chuckles.  “Fangs never go in above the hemline.”

A snarl answers but the pupil relents and lifts the skirts to stand.  Prospecta rips her sleeve and binds a tight blindfold around the acolyte's eyes before she can turn to look at Anyr.

“Serah, this is The Crimson Hammer.  But her name is Anyr which is the color of a red flower on Apokolips.  No one but me, you, Yrael and her partner may call her that.  You may not look at her until the ceremony ends.  Is that clear?”

“Yes, mistress.”

“Turn around, then.  Let her look at you. Learn her face and her scent.”

Serah’s hands reach out, fingers spread wide.  Anyr steps closer and leans in so that her face is in reach.

“Learn _everything._ Remember the legend of Ejan, Path Mother of Need?”

“Sculpted her lover in a lightless cave.  When she saw the sun, she wept for she thought her creation was her lover returned to her.”

Prospecta presses a kiss to the base of the girl’s neck.

“Yes.  The first path.  You must know her like that.   The second path...you must never deny her comfort or kindness, even when you deny her your body or your smile.  Denial of kindness breeds contempt.  You can cleanse each other of anger and even grief but not that.  You can do nothing if you desert each other.”

“Syln, Path Mother of Solace.”

“Yes, my pupil.  My hungry, playful little star.”

Serah looks up at Anyr with still-covered eyes and speaks like the last proverb was a wedding vow.

“The third and final path.  And I must share my weakness with her and she must share hers with me, so that our mingling strengthens us.  That our love may reduce us to shapeless flame, that it be the anvil on which we are tempered, the spark that fires our home's hearth and and the scourge with which we are branded.”

“Yes,” Prospecta whispers.  “As we learned from Shaal, Path Father of Bliss.”

Serah smiles.  Her fingers dance on Anyr’s face, tapping at Shadow’s scales.

“I like her face.  I don’t understand, though.  Scaly. No scars. You told me stories!  What this one felt like on your tongue, what legendary feat earned her this _tiny_ nick!  You promised me a beautiful giantess with hero’s epic written in battle scars and claw marks from the unholy beasts she slew, 'bravery written out in flesh', you said.  Those were your words.”

Aynr swallows.   _Is that how Prospecta sees my scars?  My burns?  The nicks that never filled? Fires and Stones! I thought she found them amusing...a joke since she could have the purest, cleanest thing she desires._

Anyr takes a moment to let her eyes travel the acolytes body.  She reaches out, fingertips pausing at the sides of the ribs before getting a quick nod.  Anyr travels lightly but she wants to feel it all and Serah seems to agree.

_Like this one, lean and salt-pale with a golden halo of silk._

_A web of blue veins under her cold skin, marbling her breasts like sculptor’s stone.  Nipples like droplets of frozen wine. A field of spun starlight between her legs hiding a gash that’s...brilliant scarlet and frigid.  Looks like a splash of bright blood on driven snow._

_Prospecta has her.  Lives with her. Why would she want me?_

“That is armor, Serah.  Anyr wears a monstrous beast over her skin like you or I would wear a gown.  They are one now and so long as one lives, both do.  It’s why she is always whole when she drags her bloodied carcass back to me,” Prospecta jokes.

Anyr would probably have struck her brains out with her hammer a half a dozen times if not for the call of Prospecta’s hands washing her wounds as they lazed about.

“I want to know what she feels like, under.  Bare.  Pushing me into the silks. Would you like that, Anyr?”

“I would, Serah.  Very much,” she replies, throat tight with anticipation.  “But I want your mistress to watch us.”

“Mmm,” Serah purrs.  “She won’t be my mistress by then, not anymore.  I’ll be an initiate and not a student.”

“She’ll still be gorgeous,” Anyr replies.

“Of course!  I did not say that I did not want her watching!  Let her join us when the jealousy is too great.  Would you honor me with a drop of your blood?” she pleads.  “So that I may enjoy its scent and its taste and I may always find my way back to your bed?”

_Pale woman with cold skin, no heartbeat and a taste for blood.   She’s not from Earth._

_She’s from Blood Earth, the one where the heroes are just pickier vampires than the rest of them.  Which one is that? 43? Too damn many of them…hard to keep track. Maybe I should go out and cull the sickest ones._

“Would that excite you, my little vampire?” Anyr asks.  “A forbidden thrill, like standing here in the bright glare of a white sun?  A feat of bravery...about which I am most curious.”

The acolyte wets her lips with a cherry red tongue.

“It would thrill me,” Serah breathes.  

“I have known only Her Worship’s blood since she lifted me from final death.  Yrael would prefer I not drink him. With Her Worship, I have strength I’ve never felt coursing through me, her light blazing bright as dawn in my veins, and I am unburnt.  The thirst obeys _my_ whims now.”

Prospecta cups her students cheek tenderly--perhaps sadly?--and strokes her cheekbone with her thumb.

“Lazarus Pit,” she sighs.  “This little animal angered one of her counterparts and got a staff of yew through the heart.  Dragged herself for miles to reach the pit in Madrid, the one the Moorish chapter of the League kept.”

“It appears,” Prospecta adds with a grin, “That a resurrection pit has the most _amazing_ and _flattering_ effects on a woman who was already twice dead!  By the time I found her floating at the bottom, the pit was thick black slime.  All of its magic was spent but she was no longer sunken or gaunt. She was this, soft, springy, incandescent beauty you see before you.”

“She spelled my name wrong,” Serah sniffs, chin lifted high.  “It’s spelled S-e-r-a-h as it was in the old languages. Not S-a-r-a!  Even though she called truce, she did not allow me the courtesy of draining her wounded man, the one that burned me.  The ill-mannered cunt!  Worse, she was _short._ The moonlight blessed me.  It makes us long and graceful.”

Anyr laughs, lowering her forehead to touch Serah’s.  

“Love, I certainly prefer your long,” she lifts one of Serah’s arms, dragging her tongue along the inside from elbow to palm.  “Graceful body.”

“Serah, at the back of my head there’s a large, gnarled scale under the others.  Strike it sharply and Shadow will sleep and slide off me. I’ll give you that drink,” she promises.  

She pushes gently and Serah quickly takes to her knees.  Anyr guides her sideways, pressing Serah’s closed lips to the inside of her thigh.

“From right there.”

Serah breathes deep, puffing the blindfold out with a huff, taking in whatever scent might pass the scales.  Her fangs burst out from her jaw with a click.

“Wait, my pretty one,” Prospecta chides.  “Plenty of time to play after we send that boor away.  Our love might need her armor a moment longer.”

“Steppenwolf,” she whispers to Anyr.  

“Be ready.  He’s been moaning and bleating in the parlor for _days._  Mother this and mother that and threatening and complaining and...without Serah in my lap throughout the negotiations, I might have gone mad!  See if a few cutting words from his elders send him packing, shall we?”

Splitter leaps from between the tainted stars of his cosmos and lands at her feet, the massive head dropping to the floor with a crack of thunder and the handle soaring towards her shoulders.  Anyr rolls her hands around the grips and hefts the warhammer onto her shoulder.

“Let’s teach him some manners.”

Prospecta smiles, all bright teeth and a firestorm in her eyes.  “Right this way.”

A long hallway with several sets of ornate armored doors separates Prospecta’s living quarters from where she entertains visitors so that she can invite some lout in, excuse herself and disappear to her bed without a care.

“I brought you a gift,” Serah whispers.  

“Did you?”

“Mmm.  Revenge for your newest scar.  Prospecta heard the story and sent me to find a gift.  I killed the flying bitch who gave you it and the puffed up oaf she called husband.”

_Ubergirl and the further...father...fletcher...Furher!  That’s the term. That needle dicked moron with the bow.  What are they called on that lumpy shit of an Earth?  Nazis? She destroyed their entire government just to make a good impression on me?_

Anyr fists her hand in Serah’s mane and pulls back.  

“No easy feat.  You wouldn't lie, would you?”

“Not until I’m already in your bed,” Serah groans.  “Then I would. Lie, kill, steal, cheat, torture...whatever it took to keep you under the silks.”

“I’m a pirate, love.  I live on a warship.  With me, you sleep under leathers, not silks.”

_Unless I decide to keep you out of sight in my little nest on Foehammer._

“Mmm,” Serah licks her lips.  “Leathers it is. I do not lie.”

“My fangs are sharp and wicked.  Carved of ancient magic.  I’ve hunted more men in the moonlight than they kill in their camps.  The wife still needed sleep, like any other bird.  She was a screamer but at least her husband died with some dignity.  I brought you her breastplate and two heads, cleaned and crowned. A crown of arrowpoints for a dead man’s skull.”

“You know how to spoil a woman,” Anyr jokes.  “I will have to find a place to hang them.”

_A pleasant decision for another day.  First I must dispense with my fathers least-useful ward without breaking any of that sumptuous furniture._

Steppenwolf stands at the end of a balcony, scowling out across the city’s skyline.  Four parademons stand beside him--elites--and he was accompanied a bent-over priest with his eyes scoured out and a strip of black cloth binding the wound.

“Nephew,” Anyr teases.  “It has been years.”

“Your ‘Mother’ would be so disappointed in you.  Such a view,” she pouts her lips. “And you still act so sad!”

“Eldest or not, I will not speak to traitors like you.”

The parademons to either side of him his and turn their heads his way, misshapen noses twitching in the air.

Why someone would breed parademons so ugly--or brainless--escapes her.  The ones born on the _Deathblow_ are smart, agile, sleek.  They take orders better than half her crew.

As opposed to unkempt beasts savaging anything bearing the scent of fear.

“I’d rather we didn’t talk.  Traitor is the second-best thing I am.  I want you to _leave_ is what I want.”

Anyr rest her chin on Splitter’s hilt, batting her eyes.

“You’re afraid,” she laughs. “Because you fail every time.”

“Orphan boy with a face even your Mother Boxes can’t love.  You’re afraid that you won’t find whatever scrap of madness the vision told you was here.  That you will fail a third time and fresh from your defeat at the hands of that flying brick, the metal-skirted tease and her friends, no less! Perhaps the Earth is simply too advanced for you, baby brother. Small she may be but the locals do seem to be unusually vicious.”

He growls.

“Don't, Steppenwolf.  Don’t think it. Your back is to me and your hands on the railing.  My hands are on my weapon. You’ve already lost. Go before I find an open spot on my scarf and take another trophy.  Darken this palace’s doors again and I will chase you down, powder your skull and clean my boots with your horns.”

Serah whispers something in Prospecta’s ear.

“How wicked!  How delicious.  Let’s do that,” she agrees.

Prospecta snaps her fingers five times.  Four parademons and a dark priest are instantly replaced by some soft-looking shiny material.  It can’t be stone because the lights from the candles seem enough to melt it.

 _Food.  Some delicacy Serah likes,_ Anyr supposes.   _Something sweet, most likely._

Serah strikes like a viper, moving faster than Anyr can follow from the corner of her eye.  She plunges four pairs of curving, gleaming fangs into the statue’s neck and guzzles some orange liquid within.

Steppenwolf raises his axe to cut her down but with another snap of Prospecta’s fingers, he finds himself swinging a piece of hollow glass filled with water and rosy pink bubbles.  Serah blurs again and takes the dull side of the head in between her fangs, biting hard.

The weapon shatters and perfumed water soaks onto the carpet and drips from the balcony.

“How?” Steppenwolf bellows.  “What power is this?”

“She,” Anyr blows a kiss at Prospecta.

“Possesses the Life Equation and wields it as only the gods can.  A gift I bought her. Go home and tell father his war is over and we won.  He need only say his prayers and await my justice.“

Serah pushes the priest-shaped statue aside and pulls one of the parademon shaped ones into her arms.  Fangs flashing, she cracks through the shell of whatever-that-is and drinks again before pulling back, a mess of milky red-and-white cream on her chin.

“Take that one with you,” she grumbles at Steppenwolf.  “He was dark chocolate orange. Bleh.”

He drags the leaking thing away and Prospecta snaps her fingers just after the guards close the doors.  A pained shrieking can be heard followed by a crack of bone and silence. It seems the transformation is reversible but the scars remain.

“Milk chocolate cherry fondue parademon?” Serah mumbles with her mouth full while holding the transformed corpse out.  “It’s like drinking a kiss. Share it with me. S’really good!”

Serah looks like a spoilt child with a face smeared in sweets, a sticky and stained blindfold around her face and a grin.  Anyr snorts. Then chuckles. Then laugh so hard and fast her hands are sore from clinging to the warhammer lest she fall down.

“Chocolate?  Have not heard of it.  You find the strangest things to feed me, Prossi.”

“And I enjoy the surprise on your face every time, Anni.  Chocolate is a delicacy on many of the Earths.  Serah introduced me.  Often exchanged between lovers and sometimes eaten in baths filled with perfumed bubbles,” she explains.

She nods to the pile of glass shards and fragrant dampness that was once one of the most feared weapons in the cosmos.

“Sneaky lady,” Anyr teases.

“I felt I should destroy him with the trappings of love, since you brought that to me.”

Anyr kneels down beside Serah and reaches up behind her head.  She raps her fist on Shadow’s tiny skull and feels her slacken and slither down, the burn on her right hand sticking before their flesh peels apart.

“Brave beast,” Prospecta coos, opening her desk's chilled cabinet and setting a frozen cube of raw meat on the floor.  “Come here and let me feed you. Get your strength back.”

Shadow coils around it and starts to feed.  

“You noticed?”

“Of course.  I always check you for wounds, Anni.  You seem unable to avoid them!”

Dropping her own silks, Prospecta kneels with them, nude and resplendent.  Her golden skin casts a honeyed glow on the chocolate shell. Veins of black diamond snake below the surface, pumping whatever impossibility she is made of from her heart to her head and her hands and back again.  Her nipples, generous and firm, stand out like fat black gemstones.

They feed on the sweet, hot-tasting treat as a pack of animals.  Passing over each other, nipping and pretending to growl.

Serah’s blindfold is soaked with cream and droplets hang from her nose.  She throws cream on Anyr’s face and blurs forward to lick her cheeks clean.  Anyr’s thickest scar--a crescent mark on her left bicep--brushes across the side of Serah’s breast, making her shiver.  Diamond dust beads on Prospecta’s skin as she flushes with arousal and some of it smears on Anyr’s hands and Serah’s back.

“No more,” Serah demands, panting.

“We can eat later.  The ceremony, my mistress.  May we do it now?”

Prospecta laughs, falling back to the cushioned carpet.

“We may, but I’m not getting up!”

She spreads her legs, sucks the sugary sin from her fingers and plunges them into her slit.

“Do you know the customs, Anni?”

“Bits and pieces.  I wasn’t here for Yrael’s ascension.”

“That fact is distracting me from a positively _lovely_ bit of voyeurism,” she grumbles.

“You will speak to Serah, judge whether you feel she is worthy of the title. She will kneel and ask your blessing.  If given, you will give her your offer. It must be at least a day, either dusk to dusk or dawn to dawn. If she accepts, place the medallion…”

Prossi flicks her fingers in a familiar motion that Anyr has never _seen_ but most definitely _felt_ and enjoyed.  A lockbox on the desk opens and a short, black chain necklace with a triangular charm on it floats into the room.

“...on her neck and take her to bed.  It is her reward, so do with her just as you said.  Should she wish to refuse, she removes the necklace and places it on _your_ neck _._ As her sponsor and mistress, I must give my blessings and conditions to the union.”

She breathes deep, considering her words.

“Should this vow be freely accepted…  I, Prospecta, Queen of the Three-Fold Path, do abdicate my crown and release _Mercy and Charity_ to my successor who I name as Kyiak, wombed in Armali and Rak amongst cold seas and warm leaves, long may she lead our sisterhood through need, solace, and bliss.”

“I anoint myself and my former ward, Serah, wombed in Earth under death and shadow and moonlight, as freemaidens.  Will be path-tutored but free to love as we would, paid by no one and pledged to no place.”

Prospecta casts her watery eyes up at Anyr.   _She’s tired,_ Anyr realizes.

“And I would plead that Anyr, wombed in Apokolips under fire and sulfur, take myself and my pupils as lovers as she has in the past.  So that we may roam the stars with her.”

_She wants something new and for whatever fire-blasted, stone-fucked reason, she loves me.  She wants to spend the rest of my life, maybe even the rest of hers, with me._

“Do you accept, Anyr?”

“I-I do,” Anyr chokes.  “You will want for nothing, fear nothing, never be far from my side.  I love you, Prospecta. I think...I always have.”

“I think I even love Serah, which frightens me.  I fell for her faster than she can strike with her fangs,” she teases.

Prospecta nods.  “The best love sometimes is like a knife in the back.  Confusion, shock and a bit of shame that you never saw it coming.”

Serah waits patiently on her knees even as tears roll from under the blindfold.

“Do you accept, Serah?”

“I do,” she replies, voice cracking.  “All of it.  All of it would make me happy.”

_More than she expected?_

“It is done,” Prospecta sighs, her fingers resuming their flicks and her head falling back to stare at the silk-hooded lamps.  “Give her an offer, promise her to uphold her wishes and give her the necklace. Be quick about it, Anni. I’ve been seething since you too laid eyes on each other.”

_Anni.  Fire and Stone, I love that sound.  A name only my lovers know._

“Serah,” she begins, unwinding the blindfold slowly.  Pale blue eyes and a freckled face turn up to meet her gaze.  A ghostly purple birthmark on the underside of her jaw begs for a love-bite on the other side to make it symmetrical.

“I...I’m not very good with ceremony,” Anyr admits. “Or poetry...or really anything other than killing people who don’t want to die, stealing things, and fucking people who want to fuck me.”

“That last one’s the important bit,” Prospecta grumbles, moving her hand faster.

“Serah, I want to pick you up, put you in the silks over there and take you apart bit by bit.  I want you coming up to meet me as we move together, then I want to flip you over and make you scream into the pillows.  And then I want to hold you and kiss you anywhere I can.”

“Don’t mind me,” Prospecta complains.  “No one else is here but you two.”

Serah giggles and the universe is _good_ for a moment.  Someone that dark, weaned on blood and death with memories full of terror, can still smile and laugh like that.

“We will get to you, Prossi.”

“Assuming Prossi hasn’t shoved my head between her legs, we will rest and in the morning, I will put my head between your legs and she will have her way with me.  Prossi will fuck me from behind and I will fuck you, trapped between you and her, telling you how beautiful you are whenever I remember to breathe. Then you can return the favor and grind my face into her slit until I scream.”

“I accept,” Prossi and Serah say half a heartbeat apart.

Prossi’s hand is dancing between her legs, trying desperately to relieve herself.

She has never seen Prossi act this starved before.  Not an hour ago Serah’s tongue was inside her, slow and gentle like a cub nursing at the teat and already she is cranky and impatient.  

Perhaps it is the vow, the dropping of her mask, the uncertainty of the whole mess.

Anni smiles as she clasps the necklace behind Serah’s head.

“Do you like toys?” she whispers to Serah, who nods eagerly.

She grabs one of the many scepters that ring Splitter’s shaft--symbolic proof of her dominion over some rock or another--and twists it off.  She tosses it in her hand, checking the rod’s heft and texture.

_Perfect.  Smooth and straight but the bands of inscription give it some spice.  Metal like this and even I’ll be walking funny in the morning. Any longer and it’d be awkward with no curve and any thicker and it’d be uncomfortable.  Wonder what the people of...Maraii’s Blessing...would think knowing I used the crown they gave me as a dildo? Weren’t they the fanatic hermits in the rim?_

Wicked. Disrespectful.  Exactly what Anni needs to remember who she is.  

Serah’s eyes take in the rod and nods her head eagerly, her pupils already blown.

“It’s got blood on it,” she whispers, voice thick and licking her lips.

“Which is unacceptable,” Anni quips.  “You already ate...all...that...chocolate!”

Serah pouts and it’s powerful stuff.  Downturned blue eyes and puckered pink lips.  Like a disappointed blood-sucking baby bird.

Holding it over her branded palm, she lets the maelstrom beyond the Infinity Wall rise up in her memory...focusing on the pain as her skin sizzled against something unreal and chaos itself drove its teeth into her.

Anni manages to conjure a white flame and she rubs the shaft with it, searing anything and everything away and leaving only glowing orange metal.  She drops it into one of Prossi’s oil jars by the bed where it boils off the some of the slippery contents with a cloud of spicy steam.

“Clean as can be.  For later. Get off your knees, come here and lie back.”

Serah blurs over, denying Anni a look at her.  One moment there was a still-dazed initiate kneeling on the floor and the next a woman under her.

“No.  New rule,” she growls, rolling them over so Serah is on top before pinching Serah’s right nipple in a powerful but not yet painful grip.  

Serah gasps and lunges nips almost _angrily_ while trying to use her speed to get her tongue in Anni’s mouth.

“Nothing we do, any of us do, with our powers makes it less sexy.  No skipping things with powers, no speed, no being made of the stone-fucking _magic of the universe_ or whatever makes Prossi so...Prossi.  We should enjoy everything about each other, not use one thing to hide something else.  At least I think so.”

“That means you get up, twirl that juicy, powdered-sugar ass of yours around, walk back over there, nice and slow, then walk back nice and slow.  Please?”

Serah chortles her assent and Anni pushes her away with a playful shove.

“Go on, silly.”

The long walk Serah takes back to the bed is five paces of _agony_ as her narrow hips roll with each step take and her small breasts shiver ever so slightly.  She bends down to put her palms on the sheets and after laying face down, somehow _wriggles_ up the bed in a way that Anni can’t handle in her current state.

She rolls over and Anni mounts her, sliding her thigh between Serah’s and pressing up until she finds trembling, slippery skin.  A little cool to the touch...but also not the eerie, icy smoothness of everything else Serah.

“Inside, your not as cold,” Anni murmurs.

“Of course not!” Serah replies.  “You’re making me hot. Please tell me you’re not  going to break out some instruments or something?”

Anni lunges, her feet finding only partial purchase on the floor.  It’s still enough to press Serah back into the mattress and leave a chilly stain spreading on the bedsheets.

“Funny joke.”

Serah groans and not from the thrust it seems.

_Power play?  I can do that._

Anni curls down and hair falls around her face.  Serah spits out a strand that made it into her mouth and then pulls another in with her tongue, crunching on the tip.

“Your hair.  S’good,” she decides, words muffled.

_And her thing is jokes._

Fingernails drag up Anni’s sides and dance circles around her breasts, tormenting her, never close enough to be more than a tickle.  Getting her back for the surprise earlier.

“Suck,” Anni orders and Serah arches up to meet her, wrapping her lips around a nipple.  The outlines of the fangs can be felt pressing through the lips but nothing more. A tongue dances along the mound of her breast before lashing the nipple.  Smooth. Icy. Fast.

Praying that she can support them with one hand, Anni cups the back of Serah’s head and pulls her in.  Serah hisses like a cat but whether in warning or agreement, Anni can’t tell.

“Don’t stop.  Yes. More. S-s-softer!” Anni pleads.

Serah had given it her all and not broken the skin, sucking hard and entombing a mouthful of flesh between the points of fangs and the unnerving feel of her cold tongue.

It was _everything_...Anni simply wasn’t ready and dropping them both with Serah falling headfirst would be less than romantic.

“Oh, sweetling,” Anni whispers when Serah falls into a rhythm of scrapes of the tongue and long, fluttering suckles.  “Thank you.”

She is released with a wet popping sound and Anni wants to scream.

“Ride me hard, Anni.”

Serah puts her mouth back where it _belongs_ and clamps her leg around Anni’s waist.  Driving down hard, Anni is met by a equally needy but totally sloppy effort each time.  Again and again she tries but they’re too worked up to click. Near miss after near miss, never finding a fit.

So they roll and tumble and tease each other for their uselessness until finally Serah bows upward off the bed while Anni hangs over her, trying to catch her breath.  Her soaked mound glides over Anni’s and she puts her foot down on the floor like a ballerina _en pointe._ Her swollen lips drag over Anni’s and her clit, puffy and stiff with need, traces Anni's engorged slit from tip to tip.  Serah holds her pose and then pushes back, moving up instead of down.

“Like this?” she asks.

“Yes,” Anni moans.

Eyes squinted shut and trembling, Anni cannot bring herself to move.  Each jeerk of Serah’s hips ends with a jolt and a sizzle of fire up her spine.  Fingertips brush her lips and she takes the invasion gladly, slicking them and coughing when they withdraw.  Another three fingers follow and Anni coughs back her gag, wheezing for a thousand reasons and just the one: _Serah._

Freshly-slickened fingers roll and pluck her nipples and Serah rises into her, over and over and over while Anni struggles not to collapse.

“Let go.  You’re safe here,” she whispers.

 _Safe._  That does it.  That carries her over the edge and Anni shatters, broken, screaming.  Serah rides her through it, holding her cheeks and staring into her eyes.  Glazed over and arctic blue--deep and deadly--Serah’s eyes catch and hold hers.

“You’re safe with me.”

Held up by her now-useless arms, Anni sinks.

“You really needed to hear that, huh,” Serah murmurs, lips pressed up on her sweaty cheek.

It wasn’t a question.

”Thank you,” Anni moans.

She cries, her tears falling on icy skin where they gradually slow and freeze.

“Come here,” Serah demands, patting her breasts.  “Lie down. Rest.”

Anni nuzzles Serah’s nipple with her cheek and settles in.  She wants to say something, something about how _right_ having them--even Yrael, the scoundrel--in her life will be but can’t manage it.  

She wails, each haggard, sore breath letting out carnage and terror.  She is a blubbering, salt-streaked mess pillowed on fragrant flesh and her wits are long before sleep takes her.

 

Haze.  Everything around Anni’s head is a haze of blurry darkness and it’s comfortable and cool and soft and she licks her lips to clear the taste of sleep.  In doing so, her tongue grazes a nipple and last night gradually hardens into real memories in her mind.

She opens her eyes, forcing them to focus.

“Marvelous,” Serah breathes, looking up at Prossi from her nest.  “She was scary at the start but so brave at the end. I’m glad she let herself relax.”

“I wanted to clap,” Prossi admits.  “You both gave each other exactly what you needed even though neither of you--my stubborn friend--were able to say it in so many words.  She needed to be weak without fearing a knife in the back and you needed to _feel_ beautiful and leave the monster in your past.  That thing died in the Lazarus Pit.”

“Clap?” Serah laughs.  “You had lashed your hands to a serving table!   You were dragging it around the room because you could barely reach yourself!”

“Yes.  Which is why I did not clap.  A bit of light self-bondage to spice things up while I passed the time.”

Serah scoffs.  “Brilliant plan.”

“I made it work,” Prossi reminds her.

Prossi looks down.

“You need more sleep, Anni my love.  It has only been a few hours.”

“I--I promised,” Anni reminds her, realizing how tired she is.

“I also found out you saved some grieving woman’s sanity at the bar and fucked poor Lyra into a puddle.  You did that just to _calm your nerves_ before seeing me, so learn not to over-promise.  Lyra sends her love, by the way. I expect many a marvelous orgasm while I lounge on that hideously grim couch on your ship’s bridge,” she jokes.  “For now, my tired warrior, just rest.”

Prossi shakes her head sadly.  

“I asked too much of you, took advantage.  Asked you to deal with your family--I know how they hurt you--when you came here in need and only came here for me.”

Serah tries, and fails, to kiss Anni’s head without dislodging her head from her breasts.  She rests her palms on Anni’s head and holds her in place.

“Prossi, would you kindly hand me that rod?”

Leaning over and removing the oil-drenched spar of metal is enough to make Anni shudder.  This is no doubt going somewhere terrifying and yet still delicious.

“This one?” she asks, juggling it as it attempts to escape her grip with a splash of twelli berry oil.

“That one,” Serah replies, smirk baring a glimpse of her upper fangs.

“Would you trust me...” she murmurs, kissing Anni’s palm. “...to put this inside you while you sleep?  I suspect you will wake up _much_ more interested in a repeat.”

Anni eyes the rod again with a completely different frame of mind.  It would be delicious but it would be delicious agony the instant she regained her wits.

“No. But the smallest ones are near the bottom...use those.  Clean one in a candle, put it in warm.  Fuck me with it while I sleep if you like,” she offers.  “I trust both of you. I’m serious. You’re so gentle, Serah. And I could use the pleasant dreams.”

Her communicator warbles somewhere in the pile of their clothes.

“Stone-fucking, fire-blasted shit-licking blob of Daxamite slime,” she snarls.  “What does Tol want?”

Prossi returns with the communicator.

“It's not him.  I think Tol-Vann knows where his cock will end up if he pushes you.”

“Helgrammite’s showers as a towel rod,” Anni grumbles.  “Hand towels only.”

Serah laughs into her hand and Anni's entire world bounces delightfully.

“Not him, it’s Silver.”

“Fuck ‘im,” she coughs.  “We’re busy.”

“Be kind.  He cares.  He’s a couple days out but he’s making sure you’re all right,” Prossi scolds her.  “Though kindness is not among the reasons I find him so fuckable, as it happens.”

“Is he the...” Serah pauses.  She makes a motion of gathering some small animal into her palm and stroking it while she is cooing at it.

Which is maddening for many reasons but primarily two.  Because it’s entrancing seeing Serah so playful and it makes Anni seethe with jealousy seeing her lover praise Silver while naked in _her_ arms.

“Yes,” Prossi snickers.  “The nice one.”

“That’s the difference between you and I, Prossi.  Well, one of two.”

“I’m prettier,” Anni begins.  Prossi slaps her with a pillow.  “and you fuck Silver for his _looks_.  Total madwoman, this one.”

“Ha, ha.  Pretty bold for a woman who might just wake up wrapped in scarves.  Upside down. With me eating breakfast off her back.”

“We who are about to be furniture,” Anni declares, saluting more sharply than she ever did while a soldier.  “Salute you.”

 


	10. MULTIVERSE AFTER DARK: An Explicit Adventure (Part 2, M/M & M/M/F)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smuttiness. I have a thing for feedback here! These are the labs. In the future I'll sweep back through the main chapters using your suggestions from here and smut them right the hell up.
> 
> Please comment if you have:
> 
> a turn-on  
> a need to fan yourself because something was good and we should have more of it  
> a suggestion for future chapters (the chandilier is always an option)
> 
> a turnoff  
> a just ate-sour-candy face because something was not your thing  
> a need to point out that that is not physically possible

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:  
> I am breaking my explicit chapters up into categories by genders involved (see parentheticals). My Cards Against Humanities group has some great WLW ladies who'd really rather not think about certain shapes and parts so I'm using this as sort of a trigger warning.
> 
> These will involve characters we have seen before or haven't but will see again and will not move the ball forward plot/conflict wise so they can be skipped if desired.
> 
> TRIVIA #1: The "Melsha" character is what the Kryptonian played by the current SG actress (Melissa Benoist, cuz I'm super creative about names for fourth-string characters!) ended up doing in this universe: Glee club in spaaaaaaace! She may or may not sing for us...I haven't decided.
> 
> TRIVIA #2: Some of these characters will later get up to hijinks with Astra, Non, Indigo, a layer cake, a prison shower, a prison *riot*, a riding mower and a hickory bush...and possibly more. Though not all in one hijink. Stay tuned for all that to play out.
> 
> TRIVIA #3: These characters (Prospecta, Silver, Yrael, Alt!Sara, Anyr) are cameo characters here but will be central in a separate, more magically-leaning and somewhat grimdark (but still funny) story in my mutated version of the DC/Vertigo Comics-verse that will happen at some point as this starts one to wrap up, unless the authorities have me locked up first!
> 
> TRIVIA #4: Alt!Sara/Vampire!Sara and her friends could also pop up anywhere it might make things l really awkward for the Legends.

### Chapter in progress. Please pardon the ink stains.

* * *

 

**Time-Dilated Space | Vol’sha or Mithian (“Filth” in Monitor-speak & "Silver" in Apokoliptian)**

  
The ”Seeker”, warship of the pirate group called Black Star 

Mithian’s eyes crack open and he takes in the dark cabin, sliding one hand under the pillow to his sidearm.

_Never hurts to check._

Junat stirs behind him, stretching all her arms over her head.  She’s lanky, easily a head taller than the next-largest raxxie on board.  Her toes wriggle in the open air and her palms press flat against the bulkhead.

“Hmm.  Morning skipper.”

Smile tugging at his face, Mith turns his head and gives her a peck.

“Morning, killer,” he teases.

He lifts his head to look past her to Yrael.

“Yrael?”

Junat giggles.

“Not here.  He’s probably taken that lance he woke up with and bent Coll over the console.  Unless it’s Shin. Shin was making eyes last night but I think that was just to make Coll feel inadequate.  Which is just stupid. Coll can spear me anytime and he knows that.”

“So picky,” Mith teases.

“You know me boss, I only take top-shelf cock.  And I don’t sleep outside command crew.”

“Uh-huh.  What about Falair?”

“What?” Jun laughs.  “She’s our best pilot.  Besides, a slit’s a slit.  They’re _all_ top shelf.  Love the way she acts when I lift her crests.  Sometimes before I can get my fingers in she goes off like a damned nuke.”

 _Not arguing,_ Mith thinks.   _Falair is the most whole soldier among us and maybe that’s the fact that she goes straight from her cockpit into someone's arms._

“You’re sweet on Yrael, boss.  Why don’t you act on it? I don’t think I ever see you calmer than when you kiss him.  I can vouch for his skills, any way you can imagine.”

_Because I ran away.  Because if it happens again, I would never forgive myself._

“I ran away from my old life because of a boy.  We never really _did_ anything, either.  Barely fumbled each other’s pants off before we got caught.  He killed himself the next day, because his family found out.”

“Fucking Yrael isn’t going to kill anyone you love, Silver.  You know that.”

He taps his head and then his gut.

“Knowing is different than _knowing,_ Jun.”

“I know,” Jun sighs.

She blurs out of bed and over to the gun rack.  Wriggling into her jumpsuit, she straps no fewer than six guns to her back, her thighs and hanging off their straps.

“You realize that you’re on the gunner station for the _ship’s guns,_ right?” he teases.

“Need to look my best,” she shrugs.

“Just...think about it, please?  I see the way you look at him. You were almost done and I suggested you could fuck him after me and next thing I know I’m drowning in mattress.”

Mith laughs.

“Glad I could amuse.”

“You always do.”

She bumps her boot against a small shape snoring by the door.

“Get up, Shin.”

Shin lifts her head, the glassy surface of her face flickering and sorting itself.

“Junat?”

“Got it in one.”

Silver sits on the side of the bed and waves his hand at her little nest of leathers and underclothes.

“Why are you sleeping on my clothes on the floor?  You’re not a Klixen, dear.”

“Because your jacket smells nice,” Shin yawns.  “I was going to join you but...Jun gets grouchy.  And I could hear Coll getting pounded if I stayed near the door.  It was _hot_.”

Silver laughs.  He leans over to the intercom by the bedside.

“Helmswoman, take us in.  Bring us over the Deathblow and sync up our systems.  I want us ready to attach as soon as we clear the titan’s skull.”

“Aye-aye.  You sound relaxed this morning, boss.”

He laughs.

“Thanks.”

He lets go of the button and points at Jun and then at Shin.

“Shin, come over here.  I can’t have you all frustrated over there.  Jun, do you have your kit handy?”

“You want me to sculpt her?  While you’re fucking her?”

He shrugs.

“Why not?”

Jun nods.

“Just...move slow.  Too fast and I won’t be able to capture the scene.”

“Hear that Shin?  We’re going to have to take it slow.”

Shin climbs on to the bed, nestling herself beside him.  Her small, cool fingers run through his stubble and flick at the earlobe.

“Like the way you feel, Silver.  Everything about you is just cozy.  Your face,” she drags her nails over his jaw.

“Your body,” she trails her hand down his chest and the wispy gray hair.

Her small hands wraps around his cock, fingertips brushing.  She taps his balls twice, gently but quickly and something in his brain shivers.

“Your cock.  Your balls. I swear I could fall asleep on this thing.”

“High praise,” he grumbles.

“After!” she insists.  “When it’s soft, it’s still so thick and...cozy having it in me.”

 

 

Silver is well and truly used.  Junat took him half the night and Shin--the trickster--made sure she got him for the morning.

Merely the roll of Shin’s hips as they enter the bridge reveals what they have been up to.  

Coll greets him from the systems console where a mosaic of displays and indicators fill the panel.

“Skipper.”

Yrael is--as usual--being a pest.  His lean body is draped upside down in the command chair and he has perched a field ration on his shaven chest.

“These are actually really good!” he chortles.

He spots Silver and shakes crumbs from his fingers before spanking them on his trousers.

_ Thank the Black he was wearing something. _

He cocks an eyebrow and blows kisses at Silver.

“Hello, handsome.”

“Good morning, Yrael.”

“It is, isn’t it?  The birds are singing--wherever the nearest birds are--and there’s company and hot food and hot flesh.”

If nothing else, Yrael is straightforward.  He fucks people and tells jokes. He does it extremely well so he never wraps it in anything more poetic.

“Tash, morning.”

The newest crewmember is their helmswoman, Tasha.  She took one look up at the  _ Seeker _ from the surface of the hellhole colony she lived on and made sure to stow away on it and to do so with enough information to barter about the defenses that she had a place.  Silver felt sorry for her. He’s felt sorry for all of his crew, at some point. That’s why they’re here.

It’s why there’s so few.  Eleven now, with Faela as lead pilot.

Crimson Hammer always teases him about running a pirate ship as an orphanage but he cannot imagine doing it her way.  Thousands of crew...too many to worry about. He prefers the swarming parademons who live and eat and breed and die all with equal glee.  Perhaps that’s because Anni was raised in an army and he was raised in an up-jumped orgy. Maybe it never really left either of them.

Tash is staring at the forward display as the  _ Deathblow  _ draws ever closer and the crystalline heart that houses the pleasure palace obscures all else.  

Nothing.

“Tash,” Silver asks.  “You all right?”

She reaches up and squeezes his hand where it rests on her shoulder.

“I’m good.  It’s a glorious view.”

Silver hums.

“It is.  Have we made contact?”

“Sure have, skipper.  Tal-Vonn says the Hammer is still ashore and she wants you to join them.  Tokens on the docking ring for anyone in the crew.”

Tash nods, working her jaw back and forth.

“I think I’ll go.  Ma wanted some pictures.”

Silver chuckles.

“She’s lucky to have a daughter like you.”

The jury-rigged shard of Thought Engine that jammed between his shoulder blades warms up.

[Mith?]

[Anni.  How are you?]

[Upside down.  Covered in berries.  Eating more berries out of Serah while Prossi does the last of the paperwork.]

[Sounds relaxing.]

[Very.  How did people talk before implants like this?]

[Maybe they stopped tonguing the woman they were with?]

[Horrifying.] Anni replies

[Your bridge or mine, Anni?]

[Mine.  Bring Yrael.  Maybe Junat could run the Seeker?]

Silver scratches his chin.  The logical choice would be Junat, she’s a fighter and she’s reckless sometimes but unlike Faela or even Coll, she’s creative.  In a bad fight, creative can balance out a lot of reckless.

“Junat, you’re in command. I’m going to relocate to the  _ Deathblow _ .  If we split the ships, you take  _ Seeker  _ and keep her safe.”

“Can do.”

“Yrael?  Our presence is requested.”

Yrael lifts his head from where it had been lolling near the floor.

“Great.  Can we reverse gravity for a moment?  Sort of stuck.”

The whole bridge laughs.


	11. The Four Temptations of Kara Zor-El:  Justice.  Family.  Dreams.  Pies.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":  
> Where that Nadia, known gay and a ministers daughter gives old-testament themed gifts, wants to set Kara's people free, we meet some colorful characters for Kara's improved Superfriends team--including a non-binary postdoc in thrift store chic, the required conspiracy theorist and and a pocket-sized but scary fierce Muslim gal--Kara is woke to religious faux pas, Kara claims she is not trying to wing-woman for aliens, a non-profit is founded, the seed is planted for the first alien female president, Alex stress eats and stress drinks, Nadia has questions, Kara waffles, Nadia uses sex and it is effective, Nadia has scary news, Kara gives away a piece or her heart and lover's touches are never really gone.  
>  
> 
> OUR NEXT EXCITING EPISODE:  
> Where Lena does not give a fuck about paparazzi, the University of California system cannot contain Superwoman! and real life kicks in, Eliza is the huggiest Earth Mom, internships for everybody!, Cat realizes that Kara cannot be trusted to dress or adult, Kara meets Jimmy Olsen, they become bros, Emilia gets her chance for an in person thank-you, Kara gets an alien fur(?)-baby, and Cat maybe hired more intern than she planned on...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE #1:  
> As a new tradition, this chapter will end with a short teaser (1500 words of less) of some exciting event to come, like the thirty-second flashes at the end of the show. These might be a prison break, a crash landing, a betrayal, an impulsive kiss, or a chance meeting. Keep an eye out for them as a mini-chapter at the end with "BONUS SCENE!"
> 
> AUTHOR'S NOTE #2:  
> I may start doing two and three, maybe four scene chapters rather than six-to-eight. That way you guys get more sweetness and get it sooner and I'm not fighting with the HTML editor over 100,000 characters and struggling to get long chapters finished and posted daily.

* * *

**April 3, 2006 | Kara Danvers**

National City, California

National City University

Sheridan Residence Hall, Room 619

 

“Room 619,” Kara sighs. “Where it all began.”

She lifts her hands to knock and finds that she can’t.

Because the dents are still here. Almost ten months and the dent in the door has never been fixed. Three small, round craters in the cheap wood-like substance it was made of remain, proof of the Black Knight’s first escort mission.

The first time a woman approached Kara. The first time someone praised Kara’s looks or wanted her before they knew anything about her. The first time she was lusted after and that...she’s pretty sure that Nadia has changed everything.

Nadia jerks the door open and grab’s Kara’s hand.

“Get those Tits of Steel in here,” she teases. She uses the remote to turn her music up so that only she can Kara can hear.

“Play it cool. I put the fear of God and Alex into ‘em. They can be trusted.”

“How much did you tell them?” Kara asks.

“Alien. Badass. Nice. I love you. Dealing with some identity stuff because of your dad,” she says, ticking off fingers.

_Oh, is that all? So they know I’m an alien, I’m powerful, and that I’m a fucking Worldkiller? So that’s not something that will give Alex nine heart attacks when she finds out._

“Glad you told them you loved me.”

Three of Nadia’s friends are here--Mason, Jack and Fatima--all perched on beds and chairs and the side of the desk. They barely fit before and with Kara’s bulk added, the room is...intimate to say the least.

“Mason! Hi,” she waves. “Thanks for joining us filthy students in the degree mines. Wait! What sorcery is _that_? How do you _pick_ these things? Where the blazes do you _shop_?” Kara demands.

Mason smiles, their cheeks pinking up.

Last time Kara saw them was at a faculty dance where Mason was escorting their closeted partner as her 'boyfriend' and was rocking a blazer, pompadour, slacks and bowtie. Their friends know it’s the same person but half of campus is probably wondering where the dapper little fellow went and where this lithe and beglittered and besandaled fairy princess came from.

 _Hell_ , Kara thinks. _That's probably how a professor snuck into the upperclassmen dorms without it being weird._

“Thrift stores, mostly. Church ones have the best prices...sucks to have to femme it up just to shop but,” they laugh, swishing the sky blue cotton sundress. “Works.”

“I’ll say. You and me, hot stuff, need to do some suspenders, jacket and shirt hunting. I’ll bring the spears. Bring some wolves so we can get the scent.”

“You are so weird.” Mason laughs. “Jenna says hi.”

Kara bends down, sticking her neck out so she can see better. Sure enough, Fatima is keeping to the shadows at the back of the bunk bed. She pulled her headscarf higher so that she’s little more than a pair of gold and green eyes under a bolt of black silk with silver inscriptions.

She is being far more shy than usual and Kara doesn’t like it.

_Is she afraid of me now?_

“ _As-salāmu ʿalaykum_ ,” Kara offers, beckoning. “We’re friends, Fatima. Remember? Promise I’m the same person I was yesterday, same person I was a month ago.”

[ _As-salāmu ʿalaykum_ \-- Arabic greeting translating to: “peace be upon you”.]

[Thank you Kolex but, I know what I said.]

“The Quran,” Fatima mumbles. “Says that the _jinn_ tried to defy Allah and go to the stars but were turned back by shooting stars and angels.”

Kara is starting to understand. It’s not that Kara is a bad person but that her being an alien from the stars shakes something else Fatima believes in. Her faith is one of a handful of things that Fatima can rely on as she navigates a campus stacked with post-9/11 bigots.

“Pretty sure that’s why I fell to Earth. The edge is ways out but,” Kara mimes walking into a wall. “Sproing! Next thing I know Alex is pulling me out of the water.”

Fatima snickers.

“ _Shalom aleichem_ , Kara. Thank you for not overreacting. I...I’ve been trying to take it in but...I was being a really judgy bitch just now.”

[ _Shalom aleichem_ \--Hebrew greeting translating to: “may you be well”.]

[Kolex...] Kara warns, her tattoo blazing on her skin.

[Eliza taught me Hebrew and me learning it meant everything to her. So I swear to G-D if you keep being this naughty, it’s diagnostic mode for a month.]

Nadia claps her hands.

“And peace unto me and Jack and may Dionysus smile on Mason. If we’re done solving religious strife?” she hints.

Jack waves at Kara from under a blanket on the top bunk. The glow of a laptop screen can be seen and it sounds like something made of foil is rustling around under there. He’s the funniest guy Kara knows but _Rao’s breath_ is he an odd duck sometimes.

“So…” Kara wonders aloud. “What exactly is this?”

“This,” Nadia declares, grin and eyes both one step back from insanity. “Is the perfect birthday present for my girl. You will see.”

“Anniversary, Kara reminds her. And...stuff happened, so it’s fine.”

Stuff happened turned out to mean Eliza grounding her for the rest of Kryptonian day--almost four weeks with no Nadia, no Black Knight and especially no TV appearances--after the police tossed her dorm room the next day. There was a press conference with the mayor and the governor climbing over each other to shake Kara’s hand and a very sheepish looking Attorney General of the United States trying not to be seen. Alex had to offer up spending her next shore leave in Midvale to get Eliza to let Kara go.

She still hasn’t seen Alex since the broadcast.

“Nope! I bribed Alex. Someone’s getting something that goes bang! as a thank you,” Nadia jokes. “She’ll love it.”

_Earth birthday? No, we decided that’s July 5th. First day I woke up on Earth. Oh, Rao!_

Nadia leans in and kisses Kara. Fatima sighs. Mason wolf-whistles.

"Happy _actual_ birthday, baby. Happy birth minute in three-two-one! What is it, fifty one?"

“Yes,” Kara whispers, her tears now dotting the carpet.

"You did the calendar, the thrust dilation in transit, you even accounted for the galactic rotation," she murmurs. "Thank you."

"I helped with the math!” Jack calls out.

"It's not getting you laid," Mason reminds him.

They hop off the bed and curtsy.

“Springtime!” Mason sings, holding their hand out like an opera singer. “Behold the lovely springtime!”

“Somehow I always I knew you were a spring baby.”

Kara flops into a chair, misses it completely and hits the carpet.

“You guys are too much,” she sniffles. “Thanks.”

“Oh, my dear Kara,” Fatima coos, voice like honey and her face hooded by shadow...calling to mind some desert cat waiting to pounce. “We’re not even to the gift yet.”

Nadia whips a towel off her corkboard where she pins up her assignments.

"Ta-Da!"

“A.B.L.E. - Allies for a Better Life for Extraterrestrials,” Kara reads. “It sounds awesome! But what is this?”

_Nadia isn’t one for half-baked._

“Well, I talked Jack out of Americans because Allies makes it natural if it takes off globally,” Nadia mutters. “I mean, Americans? Pff. If this thing stays in America only, it doesn't do much good, now do-”

“Nadia!” Kara laughs, clapping her hands. “Reboot and try again.”

Activism is the thing that breaks Nadia’s brain. She rambles on about activism just like Kara does about food, dogs, cats, cuddly guys and curvy girls. Protest action is sort of Nadia’s Kryptonite.

“Right. I got carried away! So when we got your blue back,” she jokes.

“Got her blue?” Fatima asks.

“Kara’s ex from way back. Emilia. Got kidnapped and Kara helped save her. _Smoking hot_ blue-skinned alien,” Mason whispers.

“Kara!” Mason calls out. “Is it still gay enough if they’re all female?”

“They’re not, actually. They’re all...neither from your point of view. They give birth but it’s cloning. Female doesn’t really track for thessies like it does on Earth. They just answer to she because it’s four sentences shorter and more flattering than explaining.”

Mason squeals.

“A whole planet of femme-leaning non-binaries? My loves! My spirit animals! Gimme! Gimme the next ticket!”

Nadia whistles, loud and sharp.

“Focus! Trying to impress my girl, here.”

“Thank you,” Fatima exhales. “I was not sure what to make of that planet. So many good questions! My imam would probably short circuit,” she jokes.

“Nadia, tell Kara. You two heathens, shush. Let her do this.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mason and Jack reply.

“Thanks, Fatima. Anyway,” Nadia starts, dragging the ‘n’ in ‘any’ out for twenty seconds.

“I thought about her whole sitch and her family having to raise their adorable clone-slash-parasite babies in a shithole because the can’t get IDs or leases because they’re not human. Not cool. Giving humans a bad reputation. Don't want Earth to be like, Space Hickville. We need a human--at least to start--pressure group to get in people's faces, fix the laws, get some legal recognition. We also need a straight-up charity to help these refugees. I doubt anyone else will.”

“So we did! I can do point on lobbying and handcuffing myself to chairs in offices and fucking up politician's schedules. They always get sick of me eventually.”

“Can't imagine why,” Fatima laughs. "Nadia rounded us up and thus..."

“...ABLE was born. Jack volunteered to do websites, social media, keep an eye on the dark web for mentions of activity, that sort of thing. I volunteered to help learn about and explain alien culture and religions to people, which is pretty selfish of me because this is theology major catnip, right here.”

“ _Viva la revolution_!” Jack calls from under the blanket.

“I volunteered to help any aliens who want help with identity crises, questions about passing or not passing, clothing and disguises,” Mason adds.

“Give them a native’s eye. Help them look like they want to look when they’re out with all us hairless ape types.”

 _Give Mason three hours, a closet, some raxxie bimbo in a tube top and hotpants and they could fake being George Bush,_ Kara thinks.

Gives her some great ideas for next year’s April fools...or State of the Union.

“We just need a spokeswoman, poster child and advocate for the LGBTQA angle,” Nadia sighs.

_Vhoc’s rotting hole! She trapped me._

“Mason could handle the queer bits,” Kara stammers. “Jack’s not bad with a manifesto and people don’t listen to Fatima but they need to learn to listen to her and...and...crap.“

Nadia giggles into her own hand.

“Ladies, gents...fashion-forward gender chameleons,” Nadia teases Mason.

“I give you ABLE's first president, Kara Zor-El Danvers!”

A ripple of applause spreads through the room. Kara’s cheeks darken.

“Just Zor-El, please. My mom’s only safe if no one knows my Earth name.”

“Good point!” Jack calls from the blanket. “Ix-nay on the evreal-ray of her ame-nay. I’ll find-replace it out of the minutes and set up an alert for Kara and Alex if it crops up on the intertubes.”

“Thought she had a sister,” Mason whispers to Fatima.

“She does. But _people_ are afraid of _Alex_ not the other way around.”

Kara walks over to the corkboard and strokes her fingers over policies and mission statements for the various tasks, all of it in Mason’s awesome cursive and in color-coded pens for Nadia, Mason, Jack and Fatima.

“So,” Nadia asks, her voice suddenly seeming quite small. “What did I miss? There must be something that you can see needing fixing that I don’t see.”

“This is _everything_ , you guys. I feel sort of bad just buying you dresses,” she tells Nadia. “This could bring folks out of hiding. It will save live, let them get IDs, work under their own names. It’s a huge gift to thousands...and me.”

“Our first alien President,” Mason suggests. “Maybe someday.”

Kara nods.

“Maybe not that someday. The oldest colonies I’ve heard about are Durlan, Maeshar and Rokkillion. Maeshars are like the _Cirque de Soleil_ dancers dressed as the Little Mermaid using only seashells and body paint except somehow even _flashier and bendier_ than that. Plus the Oval Office would need a big-ass humidifier.”

“Rokkillions can mind read with a handshake so they could work a crowd for sure. Most of the ones I’ve met here on Earth are people persons. People aliens? Whatever.”

“Durlans are probably the most likely. They are shapeshifters. Scary good ones. They could pretend to be the Oval Office coffee table when it got to be too much. No joke. The colony here is veterans from their civil war--the losers--and they’ve been here for centuries. They live quite a while but still...some have to be some native-borns.”

“What was the war about?” Fatima asks.

“Warrior cult took over the government. Other religions and atheism were outlawed on penalty of death. Short little war,” Kara sighs. “Hard to win against crazy. The survivors settled here. Mixed in with locals. Africa, west China and Chile, mostly. Desert climates.”

“But some of them might have moved to the US,” Kara realizes. “I had never even thought of it. And that’s the original American story, isn’t it? Pilgrims to worship as they like and eat turkey and pretend they didn’t burn witches and kill natives?”

Nadia chuckles.

“Down, girl. Let’s put electing atheist shapeshifters or gymnast mermaids as president on the ten-year plan,” she jokes.

“First _female_ President,” Mason adds through a bite of Snickers.

“What? She-He-They-It totally should be female. If you can look like anything you want, shoot for the moon. Break history in four places, not just one or two. Bonus points for a MILFy disguise, huge bonus points if they’re female identifying.”

“I can think of one thing you missed,” Kara decides. “Marker me.”

Nadia slaps one into her hand. Kara looks the sheet with masking tape on it. She peels it off and sure enough it reads ‘Kara’ on the top in black sharpie.

It’s blank.

“Field work.”

“Search and rescue teams, safe-house networks, smugglers, that sort of thing. Basically we need our own army.”

“Army? Why?” Nadia asks. It sounds like she may not want the answer. “Thought we were trying to reduce violence?”

“Aliens don’t land here like parking a car, not that I’ve ever heard. They crash or ditch their ships in the ocean. If they have time, maybe strip the ships them for parts or shelter. Sometimes the freighter they’re booking passage on kicks them out in a landing pod.”

“Meaning that they sometimes miss their spot or have no control where they touch down. They end up in the middle of where-the-Hell-ever and the locals don’t like it. People think alien and they think me or Kal, flying around all unstoppable with all the neat toys. But most are your usual immigrants: vulnerable. Looking for work or safety.”

“Old people, women, children, single parents, orphans. Only maybe a dozen species I know of have a combat edge against humans with guns and there are hundreds of species out there, guys. In this galaxy. Hundreds more in other galaxies and we’re starting to get communications from them.”

Kara shivers.

“I have a sister in the Army. When she can, she sends me stuff. I’ve seen photos of Maeshar bodies hanging on harpoons and Rakni-Xinda symbiont skulls on poacher’s necklaces. Thessalians starved of white sand until they’re weak enough to be used in the sex trade.”

_Thanks, Alex! I totally needed more nightmares._

“Someone on our side needs to go in, grab them from the crash, and leave,” Kara decides. “I bet most aliens who end up dead or in bad places do some because of shitty luck in first couple hours.”

“I can put a message out thataway,” Kara offers, pointing at the ceiling.

“Suggest safe zones and explain how to signal for help. I can do a lot to keep people safe but after the video, I can’t go missing for days on end. Besides...we need friendly humans riding to their rescue often as possible.”

Nadia looks up at the board.

“She’s right. We need people who can get them to safe houses and move them. But we’re asking for people to get shot at for a five-person student club they’ve never heard of. That sales pitch will fail, hard.”

“Maybe not,” Fatima suggests. “Wouldn’t some of the refugees have trade goods? There must be some who have things in their pockets that we can’t even imagine. I’m not saying we charge a fee...”

Nadia stops glaring at Fatima.

“But it would be tempting if I were a Colombian rebel...I’d take a ray gun in exchange for giving a ride to a safe house. We put out the word to groups like that. Standing offer. They help us, we give them something shiny.”

“And what about when they double cross us or hurt the people they’re carrying?” Nadia asks. “Because that will be a given. Why take one ray gun as payment when you can start killing the hostages and we have to give you fifty, or two hundred, or a thousand?”

Kara can feel her skin heating up. The carpet fibers under her hand are starting to bubble and melt with an acrid stink.

“Death from above.”

“They meet me, in armor, as Black Knight and I give a demonstration. If they screw up, I come back and do it again for real. Kolex can build more drones so I can monitor as many places as I want. We tell them they’re being watched, maybe decloak a drone in the middle of their camp as proof.

“So if they fuck us over or end up with some tech they shouldn’t, I will be able to find out. I go in… Depending on what I find? Maybe the Colombian government wakes up the next day and finds they won the war. The rebel camps are ash and the aliens are safe with us.”

“Brilliant!” Jack calls out. “Tech for trade and Kara is our enforcer. The Prime Directive never worked on Star Trek anyway. People greedy but Kara scary. Carrot. Stick.”

“Your roommate has a _realpolitk_ sort of lump in her blankets,” Fatima jokes. “Truly it is proof of other life in the universe.”

“Keep telling Corrine to wash them,” Nadia sighs.

“It could work,” she agrees. “Maybe we get some believers after a while, people who rescue aliens because it’s right.”

“I hope we do,” Kara sighs.

“Everyone comfortable with this?” Nadia asks.

“Kara’s right about the rescue part but that’s a lot messier...puts us in bed with criminals, weirdos, maybe terrorist groups,” Nadia worries.

“I say we do this and we do all of it. Everybody helps everybody stay up to date and we back each other up. If you don’t want to join that’s fine, you’re still our friend, but please leave while we plan.”

“Raise your right ha-”

“If I may?” Kara asks. “There’s a religion called Peace of the Black. They worship the universe and the stars, which give planets and planets give life. It’s sort of like how pagan and shamanic religions worship places and animals they depend on. Very widespread and very, very chill to others. They run a lot of orphanages and food tables. They have a saying--‘May the Black protect us all’--that they use to bless ships leaving port and babies and so on.”

Kara holds her hand out, palm up, in the center of the room.

“Nadia, I’m with you. May the Black protect us all.”

Nadia adds her hand.

“May the Black protect us all.”

Mason lifts an eyebrow.

“I can still pray and do sacrifices to Dio and get smashed on solstice?”

“I’ll bring alien booze if you want,” Kara promises. “We can make an idol for your apartment out of synthetic diamond.”

They slap their hand down.

“Hell, yeah. May the Black protect us all. Ooh! Can I hit on slash bang hot aliens?”

“No.”

“C’mon. I’ll use protection. Let me hit on at least one!”

They roll their hips and start making thrusting motions at...the closet door. Either it’s a joke or they figured anything else would have been rude, seeing as how there’s someone for every compass point in the tiny room.

Kara remembers one of Mason’s best queer culture jokes requiring a ball of yarn, push pins and a sleepless night to untangle but that one was _fucking hilarious_ when she finally got it.

“Okay, that’s a lie…probably hit on at least two. Get a spare for the missus,” Mason jokes. “But I will be a gentleperson and use protection. Please, Kara!”

“Ugh. Fine!"

Kara looks over to where Fatima is on the bunk bed, flat against the wall, paralyzed by indecision.

“There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet,” Fatima whispers.

She takes a deep breath.

“Fatima, I don't want you to say the prayer,” Kara assures her. “I know what that would be asking. You don’t have to touch us if you don’t want to.”

She offers her other palm and Fatima’s tiny hand disappears in Kara’s fingers when she squeezes.

"Thanks, Fatima."

“You're welcome. I agree with the idea, that’s for sure.”

“Jack?”

Jack doesn’t leave his blanket lump.

“I am so in. But I think I have the flu,” he explains, faking a sneeze.

“He actually does, I think. He looked _awful_ when he first came,” Fatima recalls. “Went straight under the blankets.”

“Anyone else worried about what might happen if a genetically engineered and _weaponized alien_ who probably has a genetically engineered and _weaponized_ _immune system_ was exposed to the flu?” Mason asks.

“I’m no biologist--oh, wait, yes I am!--but Kara needs to scoot before some zany blood cell of hers gets the flu virus, rebuilds it, spits it back out and starts the zombie apocalypse.”

Nadia tries to light Mason on fire with a scowl, lack of superpowers be damned. Kara laughs.

“Mason’s right, Nads. In fact, pretty soon Mason and I should sit down and go over what I know about the mods. I need to leave, or Jack does and he’s sick so I’ll go. At least until Jack’s better.”

"Jack can stay for two hours," Nadia grumbles. "Then all you morons leave and we resume this tomorrow via chat. Because if my pussy doesn't get some alone time with Kara's pussy and today...think it's going to chew off my fucking leg."

"My brains," Fatima groans. "They did not need that mental image."

“That’s the difference between you and me,” Mason jokes. “I’m just seeing dancing brooms from _Fantasia._..except way more clitoral and way gayer.”

“You’re all crazy!” Fatima shouts, having popped her headphones in before Mason started talking.

Kara reaches for the door and before she gets the handle, Nadia bites her earlobe and when she lets go she traces the entire edge with her tongue.

“Damn,” Mason whispers.

“Two hours,” Nadia purrs in Kara’s ear. “Be back here and don’t get dressed up on my account.”

 

* * *

**April 3, 2006 | Alex Danvers**

National City, California

National City University

Honors Dorm, Room 713

 

Alex sighs, swigging again from the bottle of Jack. Half gone. It should hurt less soon.

_I can’t believe my first words were ‘How could you?’. She backed me up when Eliza lost her shit about me enlisting. I backed her up with the principal and half the horndogs in the school. She needed me to back her up with Eliza on this and I didn’t._

_When did we end up on opposite sides?_

She has been a shitty soldier, shitty friend and extremely shitty sister and daughter for almost five weeks and it is killing her. So she has blown out her credit cards, drank herself sick and come here to...apologize? Seems like a bad plan but she only remembers bits of making it.

At least she still has enough brains left to break into a dorm.

Kara is flying up the stairs with her usual stomping jog. _Here goes._

She must not have looked up before she was at the door because she plows right into Alex. The floor is hard and her head hurts now but the carpet feels cold which is good.

“Ow.”

“Alex,” Kara mumbles. “You good? Hit your head?”

“Floor’s nice. S’cold.”

“Okay,” Kara laughs. “Gimme the booze.”

“You hit your head. What’s the date? Who’s president?”

“Tuesday? Drunk. And it’s whatsit...wrinkly. Ears. Talks funny. Cowboy hat,” Alex mutters, tapping her finger on the carpet. “Mr. Mouseface!”

“Ha!. That’s great, so I’ll give you that one. Enough booze. Gimme.”

“No,” Alex pouts. “You’ll waste it. Doesn’t work. B’sides...I’m a bad sister.”

She can hear herself slurring. That’s probably really bad. The med school classes she thinks she took said that’s bad.

“You are the best sister on the motherfucking _planet,_ Alex!” Kara shouts.

A woman almost jumps out of her skin two doors down. She does drop one of her grocery bags. She’s mousy little thing and even drunk Alex can tell she’s from a conservative Mormon family, probably in Utah. Salt Lake Soccer Club sweatshirt, knee-length dress, hair that’s never been cut, only brushed. The whole bit.

_It’s important I noticed that because that all means stuff._

“Sorry Elly,” Kara groans. “I…I’m just worried for her.”

_Elly. Try and remember that name._

“Not sure I’ve ever heard that word used as a good thing,” Elly replies. “But in this case, she does seem to need a kick in the caboose.”

_Ha! Vasquez candrop F-bombs and they’re like fireworks. Like the 1812 Overture. We should have a band! Ooh! Kara can fly for us!_

_But no sad music,_ Alex decides.

“If one of you starts ‘golly’ and ‘darning’ and ‘my word’,” Alex groans. “I’m fucking leaving.”

“Golly, Alex. You’re looking really goshdarned down in the dumps right now,” Kara says.

Loudly. Which hurts.

”I’m sure Clark could bring one of our nieces over, lickety-split. Oh my word, how that always cheers you right up.”

“That sentence hurt my _soul_ , Kara. Clark Kent has never done one that awful.”

“I have more. So better get off the floor and come in. Winn gives good tea.”

Kara unlocks her door and waves at Alex.

“Up.”

“No.”

“Alex! What are you, twelve?”

“No. You weren’t adopted yet.”

“Clearly. Because this would be funny if I had any memories of it before.”

“Need a hand?” Elly asks. “Not with the booze. That’s your problem. But maybe someone lifting her under the other arm?”

Kara sighs.

“Nope. I’m good.”

She taps Alex’s tummy with her hand and…

_Now everything is weird!_

Alex sees her hair floating up above her head and the nice cold floor is gone. Kara bends down and gives her boots a shove.

The world seems fuzzy now. Which is easier...less thinking.

“A floating my sister I go, la-la! To keep her safe, la-la!”

“I knew you were an angel,” Alex hears Elly whisper.

“Shh,” Kara warns her. “Guardian Angel...just for her. It’s a secret.”

The door locks behind Kara. _Why is that so loud?_

“Did you just levitate her inside?” Winn groans. “In broad daylight...with your top secret warp powers that even Superman doesn’t have?”

“No? No. No I did not.”

“Kara, try again. Alex is still floating.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s probably the gentlest way to get her up on the bed. I left her insides like thirty percent gravity so she wouldn’t barf. She’s really wrecked because she thinks I hate her. So I feel bad.”

“You don’t?”

Kara puts four fingers under Alex and guides her over to the bed.

“No I don’t hate you, silly. Nothing you could do would make me not your sister. So...down you go.”

Two fingers on the forehead and the blankets reach up to hug Alex...or she falls down into them. One or the other. Feels good.

“Kara? I don’t hate you either.”

Alex’s forehead is kissed and the world is really blurry and complicated but it felt like love so it was Kara.

“Kolex, synthesize 500cc of nanite medparticles and blood-safe raw material for them. Tune for blocking ethanol alcohol and metabolic byproducts but give me 10cc of them as serotonin reuptake inhibitors and 5cc sedative. Sterile hypo with the injector tuned for the human carotid. Transmat from the…”

 _Serotonin. I know what that is! Makes you happy. Or makes you sad? Anyway...I’m very smart,_ Alex reminds herself.

Kara stops talking.

“Zion?” Winn suggest. “Nice name for the refugees. You did kind of pull a Moses to get here. Babe in a basket on a river...”

“Yeah but that’s way too pretentious. Fortress is taken.”

“ _Esholo qalir_ , _”_ Alex slurs.

[Peace Home, Galactic Standard. You didn’t conjugate but you do have a .138 blood alcohol right now. Very good, Alex.]

“Kara, there’s a voice in my head!”

“I know, sweetie. That’s Echo, remember? Your friend? She’s really smart and she helps you. Plus she’s actually in your left boob.”

“Maggie will like that,” Alex decides. "She likes boobs."

_It’s important that Maggie like things._

“Maggie has pretty things...hands...butt...hands...boobs...uhh,” Alex groans. “mouth...face...neck...tummy.”

She waves her hands around. Maggie being pretty is important and she needs to explain it right!

“Kara! She’s so pretty! Maggie smiles at me. That’s nice.”

Winn leans over to Kara and whispers something she can’t hear and it was really loud and it hurts. Kara puts a finger on his lips.

“Mael’thoran,” Kara tells Winn.

“We’ll do that. It means ‘a holy place’ in Ajatkar but not exactly that because it’s a religious rite too so it’s a noun-verb. Nerb? Voun?”

“Wow. Ajatkar takes me back! Pre-standard langauge that was still common in parts of the Juru Valley, near my aunt’s estate. Dates back to pre-Rao worship days and--fun fact--polytheist abbots and abbesses helped teach me the language.”

“Holy Place...let me think.”

“Sanctuary!” Kara squeals.

“Kara! Stop. S’really loud. Hurts.”

“Sorry, Alex.”

“Sanctuary. Love it,” Winn whispers. “Sounds a bit Elvish, too.”

“I guess? Anyhow, it’s a good name. Please synthesize the hypo and transmat it from Sanctuary, Kolex.”

“Already done. Transmatting now.”

Something round appears in Kara’s hand. It came with a light and that light was really bright and it hurt.

“Ow!”

“Real tough, soldier. You’ll thank me in like, twenty minutes.”

 

* * *

**April 3, 2006 | Kara Danvers**

National City, California

National City University

Honors Dorm, Room 713 & Sheridan Residence Hall, Room 619

 

 

“Ten minutes!” Kolex warns Kara.

“Shit,” she hisses.

“Winn!” she calls, leaning out of the bathroom. “Make sure Alex is okay, yeah? She should stay here and I’ll be back ASAP. I already promised Nadia we could...catch up.”

He snickers.

“Did you now? Feeding our primitive human libidos, huh?”

Kara rubs the back of her head.

“Not sure your guys are so primitive, Winn. If your body made it easy to get everything else done fast, and Greg wanted to, how much time would you devote to sex?”

He sips his tea.

“A least a couple hours a day, I suppose.”

“Bingo,” Kara replies, fluffing her hair with a shake. “I can get my homework, meals, classes and everything crammed in ten hours and I need between three and no hours a night, depending on the last night. That’s nine hours left and I would _gladly_ spend them in bed with her. Hell...If I thought she’d love me if I did it, I’d probably rob a shit-ton of banks, buy an island, lay in canned goods and never put clothes on.”

“Sex _is_ fun,” Winn observes. “I can’t see why any intelligent animal wouldn’t want as much as it could get.”

“See? My horniness is proof of intelligent life in the universe!” Kara snarks. “Kolex, deactivate heating element and retrieve ultrasonic probes.”

Kolex pulls back, blow torches receding back into the sockets from her hair and back into the sockets in his chassis. A few dozen small spheres drop out of Kara’s hair. He releases a swarm of nanites onto the counter which flash forge an optically perfect, three inch mirror for Kara.

_Face clean. No makeup. Moisturized. Hair...floaty. She’ll like it._

“Great volume. Thanks, Kolex!”

She kisses his ‘head’ on the largest camera lens.

“How do I look?” she asks Winn.

Winn looks her up and down, twirls his finger to tell her to turn around. Then smiles.

“Like a million bucks worth of sexy in ten bucks worth of dumpy clothes,” he jokes. “Another million of jewelry...I mean hair.”

Kara laughs.

“Perfect. I think she wants to get right into it. Actually, we both do.”

“Bet she does,” Winn chuckles before putting his mouth back on his soda straw so as not to make too big of a fool of himself.

 

 

“Kara,” Nadia gulps. “Never...ever...piss off your mother again.”

“It was hard, just class and dorm, no visiting you, no friends. No...”

Kara slides her hand up Nadia’s thigh and grabs a fistful of _paradise._ Nadia wails and Kara is rewarded with a few stuttering thrusts of Nadia’s hips and a fresh splash of juices into Kara’s palm. She glides her tongue up Nadia’s body from navel to chin, feeling the occasional thrash of an aftershock travel across Nadia’s skin.

“Shh. Last one for a while. You need a break, Nads. I can tell.”

“It was scary,” Nadia finally whispers. “Not knowing if you were all right.”

Nadia takes several breaths before talking again.

“I mean, I knew you were alive and not injured and all--I watch the news and Alex would have told me--but were you _all right?_ That was a huge, scary, crazy thing you did and you basically did it for me and then everything went shit-side-up before we could talk to each other.”

Kara sighs.

“Why did you even do it? You’re in college! Why did you let her ground you?” Nadia teases.

“Eliza,” Kara begins, booping Nadia’s nose with a fingertip.

“...is really wise. She’s the wisest person I know. Somehow she knows what the best approach is even if the whole problem isn’t clear yet. Her _hunches_ could like, write advice books.”

“So if Eliza says she’s afraid for me and disappointed in me that I was so impulsive...she’s probably on to something.”

“Dawww...mommy’s girl!”

Kara snorts.

“I guess. When I first landed, she was super hard on Alex about every little thing. Acted like if I was late for school, the government would grab me and pow! It’d be alien dissection documentaries on the SyFy channel.”

“That’s not fair to Alex.”

“It wasn’t. Or, it was and it wasn’t really. She pushed like _crazy_ but Alex stepped up the first day and I think Eliza knew she had it in her to do it. She let Alex get an apartment the day she turned eighteen--Alex cracked after six weeks--just so she could experience it. When I asked because I was curious...I didn’t want to live alone!”

Kara stares at the bottom of Corrine’s bunk. They somehow managed to get both of themselves in here and Nadia’s theory was correct. A naked woman Kara’s size and a naked woman Nadia’s size cannot fit in a stingy student bed together without the tender spot--pussy, tits, butt, hands, lips--being pushed up against another at all times. Even laying here together is a dozen little accidental teases every time they move.

Which she noticed Nadia has been _ruthless_ in taking advantage of.

“Eliza just said that Alex had done so much for me and never complained. So if Alex wanted to find out what living alone was like, it was fair to let her try. Turned out she was keeping track of Alex’s efforts the whole time. She saw and she was glad. Eliza doesn't always think before she acts though. Like when Alex told us she was enlisting, I was actually in the room. Eliza lost it. I stopped her when she reached for her phone and reminded Eliza how many times Alex dropped dates, hanging out with friends, movie nights, lost friends...just for me.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. Eliza stopped cold, handed me her phone and told me to text Alex that we were both proud of her and that we loved her and that we reserved the right to worry about her.”

Nadia giggles.

“She felt the need to stipulate that? To demand the right to worry?”

Kara shrugs.

“Pretty sure the only Jewish mothers left are the wise ones with big smarts and bigger worries. Because if their great-great-grandmother wasn’t a worrier...she never lived to have kids.”

Nadia groans.

“Cheerful thought. That went downhill fast. Sorry about that, Kara.”

“For the actions of lunatic Christians ranging from 33 AD to today? Not your doing. Maybe like, you can apologize for that one time when you ruined Channkuah.”

“Excuse me! Alex asked for the best takeout in Midvale and everyone...the dude at the hardware store...the weird skater kid...Yelp!...everyone said it was Pete’s.”

“It was _lobster and crab_ Tuesdays, Nadia.”

“I…” Nadia begins. “I really didn’t think it through, I guess. Wanted to impress your family. Was Alex pranking me?”

“Maybe. You and I got about nine awesome meals out of it, if I recall.”

“Yeah, we did. Which reminds me. Why aren’t you Jewish? You learned all this stuff, prayers, a whole new language, you had a _bat mitzvah_ but you don’t see yourself as Jewish.”

Kara looks at Nadia, completely stumped.

“Hard to explain, I guess. I liked learning languages, it was easy somehow. Unlike chemistry or physics because in my head, I was hearing lectures in Midvale just a month after being yanked out of my bed by my birth mom while studying for a CPM--chemical, physical, mechanical--design competition. There was a prize! Science was hard because I kept giving answers I knew in my bones were right and getting them marked wrong.”

“Language? History? Culture? That’s easy. It’s like candy. I want more of it, to know more about Earth. Part of why I didn’t do engineering, or chemistry, or computer science when I got here is that I’d be good at it but it would _itch_ knowing how much more I could do but I might get caught.”

“You’re dodging the question,” Nadia sighs.

“I never really thought about why I stayed with Rao. Worship of Rao was...this will sound really weird to you, I bet. By the time I was born, it was more logic than faith. It was a polytheistic religion for a long time, there was also a death god named _Vhoc_ who was like a zombie corpse of a different god and a beautiful resurrection goddess the legends called Flamebird. They had this really fucked up, cyclical love affair in the poems and murals. Epic love, epic fuck, epic fight, kill each other, mourn, rise...repeat. Some of the really, really old texts have a goddess of love and knowledge called _Ktharra_...right up until Krypton died, cults for all of them persisted.”

“Oh?” Nadia teases. “ _Ktharra?_ Did I do it right? _”_

“Try and say it as two words at the same time: _ka-th_ real quick and _ar-ra_ slower with a rolled ‘r’ sound. Keep the 't' quiet. Two words at once, in the same mouth...t sounds crazy but if you talk fast and keep your voice soft, it’s possible. Humans tend to make a click in the middle when they speak Kryptonese because you need to inhale again to get the longer words out. Your stressed consonants are to die for. Sort of like a Kandorian lisp but an Argonite sniff too.””

“Kath. Arra. Kath-arrrra,” she trills.

 _Close,_ Kara thinks. _I’m going to gush just hearing her practice._

“ _Ktharra_ ,” Nadia repeats. “Better?”

“Beautiful.”

“I thought so too. It sounded a lot more like your name the way you say it.”

Kara clicks her tongue. “Give the woman a prize.”

“So yeah, my mom thought I needed to be named Venus and Minerva at the same time. But ‘ _ele’_ means star. Star, Nadia. In a star-worshiping culture, that’s the surname we gave ourselves. House of Stars. It’s fair to say the House of El has never lacked for ego.”

“So it was many gods and then over time, Father Rao became _the_ god. Flamebird was a parable for bravery and forgiveness and Vhoc was a tale to scare children. But at the same time we were learning all this _stuff_ and science was growing really rapidly. Three centuries from gunpowder to early spaceflight. So it sort of fused.”

“We didn’t worship Rao just because we were afraid of lightning or what happened after we die. We knew--logically--that everything in our lives, including us, came from that star and some cloud of crap floating around it billions of years ago. We were grateful.”

“So it just stayed. We kept blessing things in Rao’s Light and cursing things as Rao’s Shadow--let’s be real, it’s creepy as fuck spending a sixteen-Earth-day long night on the cold side of the planet--because we learned it as kids and as adults it still made sense, just made a different kind of sense.”

Nadia’s hand wanders and then she does something so bendy that Kara’s not sure is possible for animals with bones to do that.

“Answer the question,” she demands, dragging her tongue once across Kara’s clit.

“ _Uhh_ ,” Kara groans. “To talk I have to be able to speak,” Kara jokes.

“Well, guess I have to stop then. Unless you want a reward?”

“So...I think it’s becau- _holy fuck, Nadia!_ Because I thought if I did, then mayb- _that’s good!_ People would have a chance to meet one. It’s why I als- _Nadia!_ talk about other alien religions. So that they’re repre- _fuckfuckfuck! I love you!_ represented here on Earth. So that we can lea- _right there, don’t stop don’t stop pleasepleaseplease...Nadia!_ ””

“Good girl,” Nadia coos, kissing Kara’s clit. “You made her answer.”

“So that we can learn about each other,” Kara wheezes.

“So not funny,” Kara complains. “But that was so good.”

Nadia slides up Kara’s body, dragging skin on skin. Aftershocks hit each time Kara inhales or Nadia’s fingernails brush her skin.

“Anyway.”

“Anyway, Nadia? You just sex-tortured an answer out of me and now you what...want to talk about the weather?”

“My job offer changed.”

“Good news?” Kara asks. _Vhoc’s rotting hole! This is scary!_

“Yeah. Then can take me on in May, not December.”

“Do you want to go?”

“Asks the woman to whom I have literally begged to run away with her and let her keep me on a leash, naked under her desk,” Nadia teases. “Want? Not really. Or I guess...do I want to leave _you?_ Hell _,_ no. Is this a job I am stupid lucky to have? Yes. Do I want to help these kids and these families? Hell, yes.”

“You should, Nadia. I’m sure submissive-desk-nympho Nadia is awesome but that’s...that’s who I met that night when I brought Corrine back. True-believer Nadia is who I walked to class with the next morning. I got to meet save-the-world Nadia that day and the next day and every day since. Again this morning. I like her much, much more. I’m not going to take save-the-world Nadia away from the world, or her own dreams.”

“We could do long distance,” Nadia suggests.

“I’m afraid we can’t.”

“Why not?” Nadia moans. “I wouldn’t cheat! You wouldn’t, would you?”

“No, no, no,” Kara laughs. “You and me literally, physically, logistically cannot be in a long-distance relationship. Impossible. People do long distance because they have to. I could fly back every night, make you dinner and crawl into bed and for me, it would just be like...like two hours of sexy commuting.”

“But that’s not fair to you.”

“Not awful but no, not fair. At least not entirely. To either of us.”

Kara nuzzles her cheek against the top of Nadia’s head and brings her in tighter inside the crook of her arm.

“I’ve got something for you. A goodbye gift, something I made to remember me with. If you want, I can bring it now.”

Nadia grabs both of Kara’s hands and squeezes tight.

“Yes, please. I can’t have this conversation twice,” she whispers. “I just can’t. Can’t say goodbye to you twice.”

[Kolex, transmat the locket and the kit into my coat pocket.]

[Done.]

Kara reaches over to the chair and fumbles with her coat. She loops the chain into her hand and lifts it into the light of the lamp. She had the jeweler set in the glyph’s outline first. She used the Rao’s Eye she made. It came out wonderfully, hard and glittering, crimson as the last blaze of sunset. The velvety indigo darkness of the Agyte fills in the gaps within the border.

He demanded to know what stone the Rao’s Eye was was and how she cut it. When he saw the second stone, he wanted Kara to be a supplier.

_Some things are too precious to explain._

“This,” Kara says, holding it in front of Nadia’s teary eyes.

“Is my sigil in Rao’s Eye--it’s the red one--and Agyte which is dark blue. One stone each, hand-chiseled. These are the only stones like them in the universe. On the back…”

She turns it.

“Nadia & Ktharra,” Nadia reads.

“Mmm-hmm. Our names, in our mother tongues.”

“That’s for you.”

She hangs it on Nadia’s outstretched neck.

Kara slides--rather, she crashes--off the bed and gets up on her knees.

“Oof. Ruined the romance, there.”

“You didn’t,” Nadia whispers, “You couldn’t possibly ruin it after that.”

“This one is more for me,” she sighs, getting the medical kit from her pocket.

She taps the canister where a small bit of meat glows a faint crimson and thrashes to some fast, unseen tempo.

“This is a little bit of muscle from the top part of my heart. I would like you to let me put this,” Kara pleads.

She kisses her fingertips and presses them to Nadia’s chest, just under her right breast.

“In here. Under the skin, near your heart.”

“Why?”

“Because of the way my muscles work, any part of a muscle is always reaching out to all the others. Vibrating, twitching, warming up… They all do it together at the same instant anywhere in the universe. Quantum entanglement. Einstein called it spooky action at a distance.”

“Not quite selling the open heart surgery, Kara.”

“Any time your heart is pounding, Nadia, I’ll feel a little flutter in my chest. Any time my heart is pounding, you will feel it inside you.”

“Literally giving me a piece of your heart?”

“Yes,” Kara sniffles. “So for the rest of our lives, our hearts will never beat _completely alone,_ ever again.”

“Do it. Do it and stay with me tonight. I don’t care how much it hurts. Let me watch you, please. I want to pray while you do it.”

“Local anesthesia will let you do that but Nadia? It’ll hurt more.”

“Love hurts sometimes, Kara.”

Nadia’s hiss of pain interrupts her prayers. That moment is terrifying for Kara but it is Nadia’s sobs, mixed with Kara’s tears, that make the night painful and seemingly endless and make dawn feel like a death sentence.

 

* * *

**BONUS SCENE**

* * *

**April 3, 2006 | Brother Michael**

Church of Adam’s Sons

Somewhere in rural America

The devil screams when Michael puts his prod into its belly. This thing that would pretend to be a woman. That would sit among their pews, play with their children, speak to his wife, break bread with them.

This filth that burst into Hellfire when cornered, reducing their holy place to ash.

“Repent your sins. Harlot. Sodomite. Apostate.”

It lifts its hideous head to face him.

“If a man strikes your left cheek, offer him your right.”

He jams the prod in again. The power--lightning from heaven--dances across the creatures wet nightgown and it shrieks all the louder. Molten blood splashes the floor under it. A few drops but even so it is white hot and blinding as it slowly melts the concrete. It laughs, turning its monstrous head to him, its snake eyes flashing and some demonic madness wriggling under its skin.

“Leave, you piece of shit. Leave me be or your God will strike you down. You’ve already violated his law.”

He raises the prod again but he can’t reach. Some wicked force is holding him back. The creatures shackled hand is upraised now and he can get no closer. The prod is gradually bending, turning into a knot.

It grins, nodding down at the puddle.

“If a woman has her filth, take her out from the village into the desert. Release me and give me passage to the desert, or face his wrath. Let...me...go.”

Brother Michael shudders, looking at the hideous blood on the floor. He cannot release this beast back amongst the townspeople but God’s law was broken and he must atone. He pounds on the cell door and Brother Charles appears, pulling back the slot.

“Fetch the Reverend, boy. We must pray over this room.”

“Yes, Brother Michael.”

He turns back to the creature. Two serpents have burst forth from its skin. It is as if they are made with hellfire itself, not flesh, with a dozen eyes and six jaws, each jawbone and tooth black as coal. They hiss and wave their jaws at him, slithering up her arms to the shackles. Some sort of filth is spit on the shackles and they bubble, dripping to the ground as filthy green slime.

The creature stalks towards him, scoured-out eye staring at him, dead and bloody. The pit of Hell. Seizing him by the arms, it pulls its face close.

“Eye for an eye.”

 _Fresh devilry!_ Another serpent bursts through the creature’s nightgown, just above the beast’s wicked breasts.

It coils and lunges. Jaws straddle his eye socket and a ring of razor-sharp teeth extend from deep in its maw and cut through his eye. The serpent withdraws with a mouthful of slime.

“Tooth for a tooth,” the laughs, showing its many-fanged mouth half empty.

It strikes his jaw and he doubles over, spitting dozens of teeth to the floor.

“A life for a life. I saw what you did to that poor girl.”

One by one, his bones break. Legs, arms, ribs. He feels his head aching and his backbone making tiny popping sounds. A crack like a rifle shot rings off the walls but he can no longer hear it.

The record turntable they used to torture her is still in the corner of the room with a stack of line dancing, folk, disco and gospel music beside it.

“Pixie, Trixie, Glimmer!” the creature calls. “Come home.”

Three serpents slither up her legs, Pixie and Trixie tucking themselves in the orifices in her back and Glimmer wriggling towards the the gap in her collarbone.

“Give me a kiss, Glimmer. Mwah!”

Glimmer hisses happily and ducks her head.

Isosceles walks to the turntable, flips through the stack of records and finds the one she needs. How fortunate that these animals had this one. She hopes her little trick worked.

The needle scratches.

> **I need a hero!**
> 
> **Holding on for a hero till the end of the night!**
> 
> **She’s gotta be strong and she’s gotta be fast and she’s gotta be fresh for the fight!**

The fires of the womb that birthed her clothe Issa’s skin with a billion degrees heat--the imprisoned rage of a dying star--and her exit vaporizes the steel ceiling as she takes off.

She needs a bottle of Rak’s Sting--moonshine will do--and a half dozen humans to fuck senseless. Maybe her Friday night can still be saved.

She needs a vacation.

* * *

 

**April 3, 2006 | Isosceles (alias), Khorra (“The Forgotten One” or “Harlot of the Heavens”)**

The Pit Stop Roadhouse

Northeast Texas

An hour later, Issa stumbles into a honky-tonk up the road, skin sugar-white, lips blood red and golden hair falling past her ass, nightgown torn off at mid-thigh. Two cowgirls turn their heads like dogs tracking a treat and a quartet of rough looking men playing pool miss _the table_ for three shots in a row.

“Hey guys!” Issa calls. “Wanna party?”

 _Yes,_ she thinks. _This will do. The night is young and they are in my service. This one looks so needy! Worship me, girl! Worship she who even God could not cage!_

“On your knees,” she snarls at one of the cowgirls. A tap on the forehead and the woman thuds to the floor, tears streaming down her cheeks. With a smile, the worshiper yanks the cotton aside and start drinking from Issa’s slit like a woman dying of thirst.

The men groan and whine like dogs. They wanted to be first.

The barkeep complains about the public show but then a snap of the fingers silences him under a pile of toppled-over liquor bottles. He spends the night battered and bruised and soaked in tequila and gutrot whisky.

* * *

  **April 3, 2006 | Diana Prince (“Wonder Woman”)**

Church of Adam’s Sons

Somewhere in rural America

 

 

The bunker the signal came from is empty. Through it strides a warrior woman with a right hand coated in blood, sinew and flecks of bone. The point of her still-clean sword drags behind her, sending sparks up from the concrete. Her tears roll across her armor and onto the floor.

The last survivor is a man with one hip shattered and one leg ripped clean of thigh muscle and desperately drags himself away from her.

A golden rope--wreathed in crimson fire, clothed in divine wrath--strikes his back like a whip.

_Kara Zor-El may never know of this...the child has suffered enough. She should never have to take a life. Hopefully the jammer worked._

“I am Diana, Princess of Themyscira, Goddess of War, and humble servant of women.”

“You have wronged my weakest sisters. So you live and die," the steel of her sword sings as she lifts it from the concrete. "On my mercy."

Swordpoint over his heart, she drops the rope on his chest.

"Bind your hands, Philip of Man's World. Before you answer, know that the Lasso of Hestia compels you to tell me the truth.”

“God wil--” he snarls. “It burns!” he shrieks. “God will stri-No! Mercy!" "Your filthy who-ahhh!"

"God will judge me for my sins. What Prophet Thompson made us do...that could never be holy work.”

“Good. You’re learning. Where did you sell the slaves?”

“Bl-blo-blonde woman took some. She was sixty, maybe? Fancy clothes. Met her in the woods. Stack of cash like I’d never seen. She didn’t want the girls. Just the monsters.”

"The others...none of our boy’s balls have dropped so we didn’t need wives. Sold em to the usual men. Compound up north and the ones in Texas. Bunch to Los Angeles. One of them...they made us cut symbols all over her...but they paid a lot."

“Thank you. Hera’s mercy to you. Your wounds will heal. Live long, Jacob, so that you may say a great many prayers.”

Diana reaches to her ear.

“Bruce. I found the bunker. It’s empty.”

“Do I want to know exactly how big a lie that is, Diana?”

“You do not. Joker is still alive and has escaped three times. My worst enemies are gone.”

“Make the call...find Constantine. When you do, light a fire on the rocks on the beach at Crete.”

“I understand needing some time,” he begins. “But to go home?”

“Necessary. I must pray. Something escaped this place. Something I cannot even _imagine_ facing on the battlefield. The presence I feel--it is terrifying--wholly unlike what I felt with Steppenwolf or when I faced Ares or when I faced Hades or Circe. When I focus on it, it shifts and suddenly it is something new, something worse.”

“It must be an avatar for something terrifying, something that doesn’t belong. The hallway feels _polluted_ just because it was dragged down it. I sense things that cannot be combined. A hundred creatures and one. A beast from the black before the world began. A specter of magic. A traveler from the stars. SoI must see what wisdom I can glean from our Patrons and avenge its tormentors. Before it does.”

“With luck, it will tire of Earth and will leave us.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Bruce growls.

“I don’t know Bruce, I truly don’t. There’s no contingency for this.”


	12. They Call Unwilling Accomplices “Catspaws” for a Reason!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":  
> Where Lena does not give a fuck about paparazzi, the University of California system cannot contain Superwoman! and real life kicks in, Eliza is the huggiest Earth Mom, internships for everybody!, Cat realizes that Kara cannot be trusted to dress or adult, Kara meets Jimmy Olsen, they become bros, Emilia gets her chance for an in person thank-you, Kara gets an alien fur(?)-baby and Cat maybe hired more intern than she planned on...
> 
> OUR NEXT EXCITING EPISODE:  
> Kara has some one-night-stands to take the edge off, Nadia phones in her ABLE work, some things hatch, Cat has a very sweet little boy named Carver, Carver could maybe use a service animal, CatCo didn't have a pets at work policy BEFORE, Cat respects Kara's need for Eliza's safety and Cat and Kara come to...a work arrangement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> STYLE GUIDE:  
> "Italics in quotes" are foreign languages.  
>  _Italics_ are thoughts or observations and always the POV character.  
> [Brackets] are interactions with artificial intelligences and cybernetics, verbal or non-verbal.  
>  **Bold and block-quoted** passages are recorded messages, radio communications, songs or poems, etc.  
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Bold text between lines indicates notes or writing.**
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> REFERENCE GUIDE:  
> Please see "For Your Eyes Only" in CODEX for DEO personnel, roles and codenames.  
> Please see "Coursework for a Minor In Alien Studies" in CODEX for information on alien races in the multiverse.  
> Please see "Kryptowiki: Cast and Crew" for a list of all characters. (upcoming)  
> Please see "Kryptowiki: Mechanical" for a breakdown of major Krytponian and interstellar-era technologies. (upcoming)  
>   
> AUTHOR'S NOTE:  
> I realize this Cat is different but I really couldn't square Cat's sometimes-abusive behavior with her mentorship. It also didn't track well with the show canon where Kara showed promise right off but...Cat used her for Uber Eats and something that a zillion different event planning services offer?
> 
> This Cat wants Kara at fingertip's reach because she has promise and because Cat knows (but vehemently denies!) her own limitations and needs a helper.
> 
> Cat is still tough and still prickly.
> 
> She will tear down someone's outfit choices to subatomic particles.
> 
> She will make fun of bad ideas and in contrast her silence praises good ones.
> 
> Her dealing with business rivals is that of a well dressed alpha-female timber wolf (which is fun to write, let me tell you).
> 
> She set up basically a live-fire exercise with exaggerated stakes to select interns.
> 
> She wants to create the next generation of journalists she admires and pressure is one of her tools.

**April 4, 2006 | Kara Danvers**

National City, California

National City University

Honors Dorm, Room 713

 

Kara watches as Alex gradually stirs on Kara’s bed. _How rarely does she get to wake up_ _slowly,_ she wonders.

Luckily for sleeping arrangements, Alex brought her shore-leave duffle which must be the one she takes on her little ‘adventures’ in the back-country because it had enough guns in it to wipe out all land mammals and enough camping shit in it to build a town in Texas. Just add tumbleweeds.

Kara had to take a sleeping bag but it had been a while since she got a chance to sleep-fly so that was actually a plus. Kolex is hovering beside Kara, turning her bag like a magic carpet-wrapped _shish kabob_.

"Kolex," Kara groans. "Cut it out. Stupid robot. Stupid...hilarious...loyal...uh...you're basically my dog, aren't you?"

Kolex nods his sensor housing and proceeds to project a huge mastiff with his camouflage field.

"Woof!"

Kara reaches to pat his housing again instead finds herself petting sleek fur, albeit slightly electrically charged fur.

"You make a woof noise, you don't say 'woof'. Work on it. Kudos on the look though and...wait!" Kara pats the mastiff's head and plays with its ears.

"This projection is solid! And...flexy! And...way wider than your chassis! Wow! Kolex! Who’s a good boy? Who finished the nanite shell system for the disguise generator? You did! You did!"

Alex laughs from the bed.

“Hey, sunshine,” Alex croaks, a weak smile on her face. “Ugh! My mouth tastes like a roadkilled donkey's asscrack.”

“You have a toothbrush calling your name, you know.”

“Great. I think I forgot one, so thanks for hitting the drugstore.”

_I bought it months ago, Alex. Because I miss our midterm and final’s week sleepovers...even with the zipline and climbing spike removal I do after._

Alex throws her legs over the edge of the bed, slowly, carefully, like she expects to collapse or vomit at any moment.

“Wait. I was drunk as hell. Like maybe you should have taken me to a hospital. So why aren't I nauseous? Why doesn’t my head hurt?”

 _“Because I am the best little sister ever?”_ Kara suggests in Kryptonese. “Because sisters take care of each other and I didn’t want you in pain, Alex.”

“I maybe...uh...well...I might have broken the rules on doing crazy science on humans. What happened was Greg got Winn smashed once. Had to take him to the hospital. It was an accident because it turns out he basically can’t be in the same room as alcohol an-”

“I heard that!” Winn shouts from the mini kitchen on his side.

“I felt bad seeing him like that. So I invented a blocker...blocks what’s not already metabolized, anyhow. Nanites designed to break up ethanol alcohol molecules and isolate byproducts. It’s really nice that human blood is so iron rich, by the way. Makes it easy to repopulate a nanite swarm. In your case I had Kolex toss in a short half-life antidepressant. Should wear off in three days.” Kara explains.

Alex comes back in with a toothbrush in her mouth, toothpaste drizzle on her chin, wide eyed and her jaw slack. The toothbrush falls out and Kolex intercepts it with his lower arms before it hits.

“I’m sorry, what the hell did you just say? Hangover blocker? Whatever it does, it works. Because I don’t feel great but this the morning after is three drinks, not three quarters of a bottle of Jack. I am a docto-“

“Never finished a residency!” Kara teases.

“I _fucking_ murdered the boards and then, oh, I don’t know...joined the army!” Alex shouts.

“Keeps a girl busy. Anyway. Point is I understand what you just said...which makes it scarier. You just invented something that could save lives all over this campus--any campus--or in every bar in America. Why isn’t it in every first aid kit at Walgreen's?”

Kara shrugs.

“Yeah, I guess it could be usefu-"

"You guess? Alcohol poisoning kills people, Kara! Drunk drivers kill people! You just invented the fucking antivenom to booze! Buddy too drunk to drive? Hit him with that cocktail. Out like a light and safe until morning."

Kara wrings her hands, eyes fixed on her bunny slippers.

"I know. And I _want_ to use Kryptonian tech to help...but I can't yet. Need a corporate sponsor to hide behind, some tech company that it would look plausible coming from. You taught me that, Alex. How to make it look ordinary.”

Alex sighs. “I did teach you how to keep a low profile. Did a pretty good job, too, if we ignore supervillian monologues on eme-”

A pillow hits Alex in the face.

“Not funny,” Kara snaps, her strength not sufficient to keep her smile back.

“If I start dropping meds and self-driving flying cars and green power cores and ocean clearing drones out there just because I can or think it will help...people are going to start looking for the source.”

The hypo sits on the bedside table, buzzing on the wood. Alex reaches down.

“Hot to the touch,” she observes.

“What?" Kara asks. "Right. Forgot. The hypo is self-sterilizing. The glass is stupid tough so it just uses a sustained neutron bombardment from the power core. Nothing with DNA, amino acids or complex carbon-nitrogen-hydrogen molecules can handle _that_ sort of abuse _._ Then it scrapes the remainders into a hazard tank at the back. Kolex thinks we can get three hundred uses minimum before it needs a new micro-omegahedron core.”

Alex breathes deeply, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Of course it is self-sterilizing _and_ self-recharging,” Alex sighs.

“And Kara? Take credit for things. As soon as we figure out how to get this stuff out there, you are going to save millions of lives a year just in hospitals. That other stuff you mentioned can save the _fucking planet_. You could stop us from wrecking our world. Prevent another species from committing eco-suicide. Prevent another Krypton. Hell, the hypo _alone_ is a life saver and cost-saver. When you invent _awesome_ things, you need to feel _awesome_.”

Kara blushes. "But I didn't earn it, Alex. It's the science version of being born rich."

“So I didn't invent that. I have training in engineering, sure. I'm good with Kryptonian prototyping machines, I get that. Dad and I used to tear down spaceship wrecks for warp drive parts as like, daddy-daughter bonding day. My outpost kit contained a full schematic database for the fabricators...every production-ready design to build a camp, a city, roads, factories, power plants, a starport… Basic colony stuff.“

“Plus they added military schematics on my mother's authority with the Council and there's some creepy as fuck classified stuff my dad added. If I can get minerals, describe it to Kolex and an existing design is in there or is close, we can hack something together. I actually started a notepad of stuff I want to try.”

“Not that exciting really.”

Alex snorts.

“Uh-huh. Was that device in your outpost kit? That exact device? That exact medicine?”

“No.”

“Uh-huh. So you _invented_ it. And how many other people on the planet are qualified to tell Kolex what you needed? To even visualize it in enough detail? Is there a single human who could?”

“One. Two...maybe? I read an article in WIRED about how inventions work and how engineers think. Maxwell Lord is a maybe. But if he doesn't get on Wonder Woman's good side again...dead men file no patents. But I’m positive Lena Luthor could ace this sort of thing if we gave her the LEGO kit, so to speak. She has the right sort of mind. She starts with words, she said in the interview. She describes what it should do and then looks for how and only then thinks about parts.”

Kara stops talking and stares at her wall calendar with a weird look on her face.

“Shit. Job fair in twenty all the way across town.”

Kara looks at her feet.

“Sorry.  I’m supposed to be boosting your confidence, Alex. I wasn’t the sad, pouting drunk last night.”

Alex sighs, running her hands through her sweaty hair.

“Honestly, Kara? Hearing that you didn’t hate me was big. I was really pissed at myself for landing on you so hard and after that we didn’t talk so I thought you were avoiding me. I assumed the worst.”

“I wasn't avoiding you. I was mad at myself, I suppose for breaking my cover after all your work. Actually mostly I was doing yoga and Shavo-Tahiko meditation to calm the fuck down after what happened to Nadia and to figure out what I need to do next. I can’t be Kal, Alex. That’s not what I know. Not easy to be a girl scout when you’ve watched your species nearly go extinct and ended up on a planet where like three people loved me, all strangers. Strangers at first. With the Worldkiller grafts in me, I can never be as good a person as as he is.”

Alex is drumming her fingers on a thigh-holstered weapon she doesn’t realize she isn’t carrying.

“No. You’ll be better. Kal has trouble getting rough, no matter how bad it is. He's bulletproof and he was raised by the nicest woman alive. So he never has to think like humans do: would the world be better, safer, without _that_ person in it? Last week he airlifted supplies to a Somali refugee camp and then set up a wall to keep rebels out. Any army in the world would have followed up an airlift with a carpet bombing run on the rebels.”

Winn comes in with tea for them both, oatmeal for Alex and toast, steak and eggs for both himself and Kara.

“You said that Krypton’s enemies called them Worldkillers. Your army didn’t,” he reminds her through a mouthful of crumbs.

“Yeah, so?”

“So...maybe don’t think of yourself as something that enemy soldiers named it. Sure, Destroyer isn’t super fluffy. Sovereign is just _eh_ and it might scare the government. Wasn’t one of the others Fist?”

“Fist of the _Empire,_ Winn.”

He shrugs.

“Doesn’t have to be. It could be Fist of _Justice,_ Kara.”

Alex jabs her oatmeal spoon in his direction.

“What he said. I don’t call myself imperialist running-dog scum just because the North Koreans call our soldiers that. Words matter...especially what you use for yourself. It sinks in and if it's bad, messes you up. Think about it.”

“Will do,” Kara promises.

She disappears in a burst of superspeed and comes back dressed for a job fair, her clothes still crackling with static.

“So, Alex...whatcha think?”

“I think at least it’s not denim but it’s for sure odd. Tweed jacket and wool slacks? Suspenders? Bowler hat...really? At least it’s business- _ish_. Enough you won’t get kicked out. Maybe consider getting a suit?”

Winn pumps his fist at the ceiling.

“Truth! Jacked girls all need to own suits...them’s the rules,” he declares. "That and backless dresses. Workout selfies with hand, arm, back or shoulder are basically sexting for a couple lezzies I know from GSA."

“Huh. I did not know that, Winn. Kolex? Play back Alex’s last twenty minutes before she fell asleep. Winn, don’t let her leave until I can talk to her about it. Kolex, don’t let her kill Winn to escape.”

“Understood, Lady Kara. Barrier field generator programmed to contain Alex and Winn prioritized in defense protocol.”

"I don't get it, Kara."

Kolex starts playing the recording of Alex’s drunk, sappy, effusive praise of Maggie’s various attributes and how her smile makes Alex feel.

“Bye now!”

“Kara! Get your ass back here!” Alex demands.

Unfortunately, Kara has already zipped out the window and is halfway to CatCo Plaza.

 

* * *

 

**April 4, 2006 | Alex Danvers**

National City, California

National City University

Honors Dorm, Room 713

 

Alex is still shell-shocked from the recording of herself. Nothing she can do about it now but pretend it didn't happen, throw pretending in a box and send it down a river in Egypt.

"Winn," she asks. "Was Kara for real with all that stuff? Those designs she has?"

Winn is in the middle of some suspiciously _amazing_ video game, wearing a helmet, gloves with glowing sensor patches and a harness. On screen is a two-sided projection of some medieval city with enough grimy peasants, silk-clad elves and sleepy-looking dragons perching on roofs to make Tolkien piss himself _._

Vasquez and Alex like to play Call of Duty now and again, show those mouth-breathing teenagers how it's done. This is not just prettier...or more complicated. It's insane. Someone in the background is sawing a log and some woman is throwing a bucket of _holy yuck that's disgusting_ into the street. Knights go by on patrol, having a dozen different conversations in a made-up language.

"Winn!" she interrupts, tapping his shoulder.

"Gah! Die, foul orc!"

Alex lifts her arm to block his swing and Winn connects hard with her forearm. Unprepared, he topples backwards on to the bed. He whips the helmet off and looks a little green around the gills.

"Answer me, human!" she bellows.

"Sorry, Alex."

"I was mostly teasing. Orc, huh?"

"Anything grabs me in real life, the code adds it to the game and randomizes whether it's a friendly or a surprise attack. Anyway. Missed the question."

"Kara was just rattling off all that tech she has access to. Is that for real?"

He nods.

"One night, I asked her some stuff about NASA and if she could help them get to Mars. Next thing I know, she's showing me the build process for a heavy freighter, escort ships and estimates of mineral cost. That's where she's stuck...raw material. Omegahedrons take five times their weight in uranium _minimum_ and require artificial neutron matter for the shielding. White sand takes ten times its weight and a three-particle thick layer of neutron matter. Both takes forever to cook, sustained singularities to compress and the waste product is so dense she’s been dumping it in deep ocean trenches. Neither is safe to refine in atmosphere...or gravity.”

“Computers like Kolex need palladium, iridium, refined silver, carbon dust, liquid nitrogen to cool the core during bootstrap. They need lasers to scrub the vacuum chamber for temperature insulation of the quantum bits. The basic stuff--like the uber taser we built--that's easy. Her suit was...doable.”

“Big numbers or powerful or important stuff takes fancy materials that are hard for her to get. She tried just buying it but that lasted like two months...shell companies with that kind of scratch draw attention.”

“Where is she getting this stuff? Pretty sure the Army would lose its shit if massive transfers of uranium were happening. I would hear about it.”

“I think she's been mining asteroids? Dunno....not like people count how many of them go missing each year. Kara disappears for a while and then comes back with a stupid grin and like, paella, tacos, a straw hat and a bunch of margaritas?"

 _Nadia’s car,_ Alex realizes. _Must have taken weeks of strenuous hand labor just for the metals to put in the parts to put in the car. In vacuum. Cold and alone._

Alex’s brain isn’t ready for duty just yet. This is too much. She should have paid more attention, helped Kara, done this _with_ her sister.

"Huh? Mexican food?”

"Oh, her secret base is in the Baja desert. Right on the coast. Not far from Tijuana. That's where she would drop stuff off, no question."

Alex pinches her nose hard enough to give herself a nosebleed and takes deep, forced breaths before replying.

"Why do I not know my sister has been hoarding rare minerals in her supervillian hideout? Winn...is she also hoarding shark tanks, East German _femme fatales_ and white cats?"

Winn smiles.

"Platinum blonde _femme fatales_ for sure. She's not a cat gay...or a shark gay. At least not yet."

Alex chuckles, stuffing more Kleenex in her nose.

“How bo I hep her wid dis?” she asks. “She shob nob haf to do dis awone.”

“Dunno. Get her some more hands to help? Get her permission from the authorities?” Winn suggests, rubbing the back of his head.

“Talk her into taking up some tier-one attendants and constructor drones? She wants to avoid breaking any laws or being seen so she’s been going up with like, a couple duffle bags per trip since she can beat radar. Doing this past lunar orbit where there’s no claim. Also I think she’s the Justice League space station. Maybe just Batman though. Last week she told me she dropped six dozen eggs above it in the gravity well, timed to impact his bunkroom’s porthole when it was rotating by.”

Alex laughs so hard she dislodges the bloody Kleenex.

“I think she needs her big sis on this, Alex. To tell her it’s okay and to hold her hand. The government scares the hell out of her...and I don’t blame her. What’s the likelihood that the DEO is the only government agency working on aliens? For every good cop, there’s a bad cop.”

Alex nods.

“I’ll bo it. Neeb to bake a pone cald.”

Winn laughs.

“Howsabout an email, Alex? Wait for the swelling to go down.”

“Goob poind. Do dat insteab.”

She bends over her duffel, fishes past the booze and---crap! should have left the guns on base!--and finally finds her DEO-spec phone. Flicking the toggle for the scrambler, she scrolls through a list of code names.

 

* * *

 

**Blacksmith,**

**This is White Knight. I found out Tinkerbell has been holding out on us. Serious gear. Enough to give us Land-Atmo-LowOrbit combat supremacy. Request permission to bring Tinkerbell in from the cold.**

**For security, request the following.**

  * **Request that Vigilante takes a look at Lena Luthor and LuthorCorp. Background checks, threat assessment, site scrub, full personnel audits. Recommend CIA, NSA, FBI and implanted assets if possible. Luthor has a file on the Luthor/Cadmus investigation under informant alias “Eyeball”.**
  * **Blacksmith meets with White Knight and Tinkerbell in a SCIF facility. No additional personnel. Tinkerbell reads in Blacksmith.**
  * **Tinkerbell voluntarily offers limited, non-lethal field support, prioritizing medical, exfil assist, quick response force and air space denial.**
  * **Armed security detail on Tinkerbell / White Knight's listed next of kin. Plainclothes. US Marshalls / FBI tac-team / United States Secret Service preferred. Tinkerbell can provide off-the-record financials.**



**For chain of command, request the following**

  * **Tinkerbell meets ChiefStaffArmy, ChiefStaffAirForce, ChiefNavOps, CmdSgtMjrMarineCorps and IntelDir to outline force coordination and RoEs.**
  * **Tinkerbell meets AttyGen and IntelDir, DirFBI to discuss legal.**
  * **Tinkerbell denies meeting SecDef if possible. Keep full extent of capabilities in-house.**
  * **Tinkerbell denies meeting POTUS. Do only if required. Recommend against. Did not vote for. Does not like. Tinkerbell highly likely to offend POTUS. POTUS guaranteed to offend Tinkerbell and US Secret Service not equipped.**



**For implementation, request the following**

  * **Tinkerbell meets with and trains Gentleman, Badger and Ice on the revised tactical gear. DEO-1 replicates training to other teams.**
  * **Tinkerbell meets with Tailor, Headset, Paperclip and Bleeder to discuss med bay/weapons/vehicles/intel gear.**
  * **Pending recon on LuthorCorp, contact for negotiations.**
  * **Tinkerbell meets DARPA to discuss research.**



 

**White Knight**

**(auth Alpha-India-Tango-Six-Niner-Omaha)**

 

* * *

 

“If I ask who you’re emailing, you have to kill me, right?”

“Yes, Winn. I would. I’ll try to make it painless though. And really minty. See, there’s this thing you can do with two packs bubblegum, a knife hand to the neck and a strike to the solar plexus…” Alex replies.

“Y’know, I’m good. Gonna kill some more orcs. If you need me, use that bell thingy. It sends a message to the headset rather than ripping my brain and inner ears out of a fun reality and into this boring one. ”

He points to a clicker remote on Kara’s desk. A smirk flickers on Alex’s face.

“Hey, Winn. You got another setup?”

“Huh?”

“Oh, yeah. In the closet. It’s sized for Kara but...just tap the chest harness three times and it’ll compress to your size.”

Alex sets her phone on the table and slides into the bodysuit and then drops into a sparkling, fairy-infested, dragon-riding wonderland. Where only the Elven _princesses_ will talk to her for some weird reason.

She doesn’t see the email for hours.

 

* * *

 

**White Knight**

 

**Permission granted for all. Pieces in motion now. Vigilante has been contacted offline. That channel is confirmed secure.**

**Do not, I repeat, do NOT contact Luthor until Vigilante clears her.**

**Be advised that I have your six, White Knight. Tinkerbell is our comrade-in-arms. No one left behind.**

 

**Blacksmith**

**(auth Charlie-Two-Quebec-Yankee-Four-Zulu)**

 

* * *

 

Alex is roused by a ‘intruder alert’ pop up on her headset. She surveys the battlefield where orcs and men and elephant-sized rats lie dead, or dying or injured. Beside her stands a small man, gnome-sized, dressed to the nines, holding a small crossbow and an unlit cannonball-type bomb in the other hand.

She pulls her greatsword free of the rat and wipes guts and blood off on the fur.

“This is where we part, my crafty friend.”

“As thee wish. If only they listened when you stood at the gates. But, as I said before, milady...no _man_ has ever breached these walls.”

The grin the gnome gives her is all Winn.

 

 

Alex pulls the headset off, grateful for her short haircut and less excited about how the sweat and hair gel mix. Whoever it was, they let themselves in to the darkened suite.

“I’m armed,” Alex calls out.

It’s not technically true but it’s close. She’s stalled a charging raxxie long enough to make it to her weapon. Two paces in pitch black is nothing.

“Hmm. I would be disappointed if you weren’t,” purrs a woman’s voice.

“May I turn on the light?”

Alex has her arc pistol in hand and her thumb is on the power control. If heavy stun doesn’t drop the intruder, she’ll put a hole in them, the wall behind them and quite possibly the belltower across the quad.

The lights click on.

“Alex? You look good.”

“Uh, thanks Emilia. You look...damp.”

Emilia laughs that same quick, tittering laugh that made Kara’s knees weak in high school. As the big sister of the aggrieved party, Alex is less than impressed. She drops the gun back in her bag.

“My body is secreting a liquid environment to keep it old school for my fishy ass. Side effect of my condition,” she jokes.

Patting her middle, Emilia calls Alex’s attention to the baby bump.

“You’re pregnant! That’s great!”

Emila beams _..._ not smiles, not smirks, not that flirty little pout she used on Kara. This is like staring at the noonday son. Her jelly-dampened crests are drooping at the tips, her eyes are shiny and pupils half-blown. A living body in a state of happy balance -- and no doubt happy hormones -- that looks good on her.

“I tend to think so. Is Kara in? I want to say thank you in person for the rescue. I brought some chocolates, cards and a gift.”

Alex shakes her head.

“Job fair at CatCo. Some sort of trial-by-fire thing where they all get tossed off the deep end and _do the job_ for a day. If the Queen of All Media deems them worthy, they’re hired. Freaked even Kara out.  Winn’s going for the second part -- IT staff start after reporters -- so maybe he could give you a ride.”

“Job fair? Really?” Emilia laughs.

“She’s what...a sophomore?”

Alex’s cheeks darken.

“She has...uh...been taking night classes at Stanford.  Engineering, math, art, philosophy, music.  General education requirements and some personal interests _._ Had the transcript mailed on Monday. The registrar will flip I’m sure, but she graduates in April, I think, after the last half-semester. Because Stanford isn’t in the UC system...”

Emila chuckles. “No one could catch her taking a lethal course load. Kara couldn’t resist, could she? Thought she had a new girlfriend. Nadia? Sounds like a nice little lady.”

“She does...or did. Nadia has a good job lined up back home in Georgia and they could take her now. She was a junior when they met. Said their goodbyes yesterday, I think.”

Emilia frowns.

“She had a girl.  So then why was she studying all night?”

Alex shrugs.

“Woman only sleeps if she feels like it. Maybe Kara would just set her laptop on Nadia’s butt and do homework when she stayed the night?”

“Can you give me directions to CatCo? Maybe I’ll buy her a coffee when the fair is over.”

Alex coughs.

“Uh, you’re blue and like, covered in…” Alex sniffs. “Citrusy-smoky smelling jello…you would stand out. Can you even do a microsingulary net right now?”

“Eating and sanding for two. Kicks in with the whole ‘rawr! must protect young!’ instinct. I could probably hide this _building_ if I felt like it. But honestly I was going to do a big ass hat and a maternity dress four sizes too big.”

Alex holds out her phone with the address pulled up on it.

“Thanks, Alex. By the way, nice phone...operative.”

“What did you say?”

“It’s cool. Nakka told me about you helping her out. My lips are sealed.”

“Kara’s busy for like...six more hours,” Alex reminds Nadia. “Either tag along with Winn or use the five-ten bus.”

“Could I, uh, get some advice?”

“Ooh!” Nadia squeals.

“Boy trouble? No… You're blushing and dopey-looking but scared and you primitives don't get it how the universe works. So it’s _girl_ trouble. Ha!  I knew it.  Kara owes me a fifty.”

Alex is opening and closing her mouth stupidly, trying to find a word or two.  She finally stops when she hears about the bet.

“Excuse me?”

“We had a bet. I bet you were, she bet you weren’t. I think Kara suspected but wanted to be respectful and not bet on her closeted sister.”

Emilia leans back in Kara’s desk chair.

“Alex, sweet confused child...” she coos.

“I’ve been ripping bodices open, sliding hip-beads off and unwinding saris since the court of Elizabeth the First. I’ve ravished women in closets--literal closets--and under the altar in the chapel the morning of their wedding day, in their husband’s offices, on the forest floor of the Congo, in a temple on the Ganges, in the snow in the Yukon. And only two of those women _admitted_ they were gay when we met.”

“Nine times,” Emilia sighs. “Nine times I’ve married a woman, Black take the laws.  Married or sworn to keep her and her heart, her sanity and her children whole in a shit marriage to some cock-swinger.  In sight of whatever gods and trusted friends and secret-keepers she had. For better or for worse, til death do we part. The _vows_ are what hurt the worst, every time. Looking into her eyes and promising her that but knowing that I would be the one parting at her death.”

“That’s...I’m sorry,” Alex finally manages, unsure what else to possibly say.

“Don’t be. Earth has been a blessing for me. Here I have been a widow thirteen times over but not once have I regretted loving the man or woman who was growing old beside me. It’s why I sought aliens, like Kara and now Nakka, Tam and Kin. My family. So that we could grow old, or not, together.”

Emilia sighs.

“Point is, you could not ask for a better spirit guide about human women who won’t yet admit they’re lesbians.”

Alex paces the room in a crooked loop, hands pulling at her sweaty, gel-slicked hair.

“So there’s this girl.”

“Cradle-robber,” Emilia jokes. “Pervert,” she adds with a hiss.

Alex chuckles.

“Fine. Right. Woman. Her name is Maggie Sawyer and she’s a police detective here in National City. I work with her when we need to interact with local police. She’s…” Alex pauses.

“Funny. Cute. About five-foot-nothing so...she overdoes it. Struts into a crime scene like she is walking into a singles bar. Acts like  she will break a six-foot two, five hundred pound alien perp in half and crack walnuts with his skull. Then the moment he’s locked up she turns to me and smiles. Make a joke. Accuses me of letting aliens loose just so we can flirt. Walks away too slowly and with too much swaying.”

“God, Emillia. Her smile. White teeth an-she’s dark skinne-” Alex babbles. “Her skin is _amazing_. Those teeth and the  _dimples_. She looks at me and suddenly I have one IQ point...all I know is that I want to kiss her and have her kiss me. It might be the dimples. The dimples are a distraction,” Alex admits.

“I’ve never felt this way. With boyfriends, I … sort of wondered what the fuss was about.”

Emila nods, her scaly fingers tented.

“Thought experiment, Alex. Take Maggie in your mind. Make her male…hard, I know. She sounds like Marilyn Monroe made out of caramel, the way you talk about her. You’re back in school, in Midvale. You’re in the club room, playing chess. A sprinter walks by. Little guy from the track team. Great smile. Finds an excuse to laugh whenever you meet. The one who always teased you...said you came to meets just to distract him.”

“Would you date _him?_ ”

“Yes,” Alex croaks, her throat closing.

The sheer enormity of how deeply fucked she is has become clear to Alex.

She’s having trouble not telling _Emilia_ and if she was dating Maggie, she’d probably be shouting it in the armory, given how stupid she’s acting. She would probably break into the White House and shove a rolled up copy of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell order down George Bush's throat if Maggie asked nicely.

“Ka-pow. There’s the answer.” Emilia replies, tilting forward in the chari. “You were overthinking it. It’s _Maggie_ that you love and her being a woman is only a part of her.”

“What do I do? I’m a _soldier,_ Emilia. I would get discharged, lose a job that I’m pretty sure is my life’s work, lose my pension, my healthcare, everything.”

“And since it’s a gag order, you can’t exactly find friends to confide in,” Emilia sighs.

 _Well, that I would have,_ Alex realizes. _Put that in the plus column._

“Do you live on base?”

“Two days a week, three tops. Sometimes not. When we’re planning an op, I stay there seven days a week. My commanding officer wants me out with the civvies, keeping an ear to the ground.”

Emilia clicks her tongue.

“Don’t try it on base, not under these rules. I remember how cramped military life was.”

“What?” Alex blurts out. “I didn’t know that about you.”

“More than a century before I came to Earth. Two hundred eighteen years in a mercenary company out of Starhaven called Black Nebula. Thessalian armies are pretty informal. We did our own thing: hit Daxamite shipping, ran bounties, kidnapped, ransomed, the usual. When the motherworld needed us, we showed up and fell in with the regular army...just as they expected us to.”

“But this isn’t about me. So you have five days then, usually more, out in the world, with her. Secret love, Alex, is one of the sweetest and most terrifying things. Stolen kisses, both your hearts pounding with the fear of getting caught. Ducking into alleys and graveyards and empty churches for a quick feel...or more.”

“I would have to hide it.”

“Well,” Emilia exclaims, throwing her hands up. “I guess it’s doomed then. Not like you’re a secret agent who sneaks around _for a living_ and whose sister once built a flying, self driving, bulletproof car for her girlfriend. Which must make road sex _so_ much easier. I have to see if I can beg Kara for the minivan version.”

_Oh. Yeah. Hiding it is only a ‘how’ part of the relationship, not a ‘whether’._

“Talk to Kara, Alex. When she’s done giggling, hopping around and screaming, she’ll help with the secrecy.”

“Then?”

“Talk to Maggie. Probably make a fool of yourself but if you do, laugh it off. Make her laugh. You can get away with a lot if the other person knows you were nervous because they matter to you. If it gets serious, check with Kara. I think she knows Maggie’s ex-fiance. Hopefully they can give you some tips on what _not_ to do.”

“I should go, Alex. I hope that helped.”

“Very helpful, thanks.”

“Oh, and Alex? Don’t talk to strangers about Maggie when you’re not wearing a bra. Don’t know what daydreams you’re having but those cherries could _cut glass_ right now.”

Alex groans and Emilia snickers her way down the hall.

 

* * *

 

**April 4, 2006 | Kara Danvers**

National City, California

CatClo Plaza

The Outdoor Arts Plaza AKA “Seashell” 

Cat Grant stands on an elevated platform over a sea of interns. With her still posture, sharp gray eyes and her designer jewelry twinkling in the midday sun, Kara can see why ‘Queen’ stuck to her so early in her career.

A personal assistant with curly blonde hair hands Cat a microphone.

“My name is Cat Grant. I began my career even lower than all of you. As an _unpaid_ intern at the Daily Planet. One night, a vice president took his hand on my ass and joked that I should write for their gossip magazine sex column. An insult...but an insult with a byline.”

She grins, all teeth and tightly-drawn pride.

“Now he is four lawsuits and two divorces poorer. And that…” she gestures to CatCo Tower. “..and that,” she gestures to the small outdoor stadium full of soccer brats. “...and that, that and that, are mine.” She points to the ‘town square’ of giant TVs and internet terminals, the fleet of news vans, the helipad on the garage, and the stage she stands on.

“Now,” she begins, unclipping the mike and walking a straight line across the stage, back and forth like a general reviewing troops.

“Some of you think that means _you_ can do all these things. That a couple visits to the orthodontist and a hundred dollar shirt and daddy paying for Stanford and a nice car, mean you have what it takes. You don’t, I promise you. You are not the next breakout success.”

She points to a man wearing a white polo with a winning smile and a bluetooth headset.

“You don’t because _you cannot possibly_ have the mindset to succeed. I did not, not when I was your age, still gooey with the afterbirth after graduating from Bryn Mawr.”

Some of the women in the crowd laugh, most of the men make grossed-out faces.

“The woman I was then is _dead_ but at least _that poor woman_ had scraps of me...ambition, drive, keen fashion sense,” she jokes, waving the microphone at her blue and gold number.

“I piled the scraps of her together and through sweat and tears and years of work, I made new parts. New skills, new resilience, new ways of looking at things.”

“That let me see new opportunities, pitch ideas to my bosses in new ways, take new risks.  Here I stand.  Yes, I know, I have a best selling autobiography and my own section on TMZ,” she jokes waving her microphone lazily.

“But that’s all bullshit. This is the Cat Grant story. Ten sentences. Ready?”

Kara can hear the squeak of a food cart a hundred yards off and for a change, all the humans around her can too.

“I started. I failed. I recovered. I failed again. I recovered again. I gambled and I won. I used up six of my nine lives building this place, growing in to the woman standing here. In my world, journalists _work_ and _uncover_ and we _behave ourselves_ and we _save the world and ourselves_ by doing it _._ That is my expectation and I am Queen of All Media, so my word...is law.”

“Miss Tessmacher will be assigning you each a ten minute slot to pitch me a story. You will have three hours to find it, two to write it and one to proof, edit and submit it. Digital, print or video. If you’re masochist, try for all three.  If I find you worthy of the honor of being in my presence, it will be because that story will be one-hundred-percent ready for use on our platforms. If that’s the case, you will have a job on graduation.”

“People call me harsh. Both my dress code and perfectionism has been compared to the terrible reign of Steve Jobs. It’s not because I’m a bitch...well...not _only_ because.”

Every woman in the audience laughed, Kara is sure of it.

“It’s because the only way to be ready for this job is to jump into the ocean and learn to swim.”

Cat passes the mike back to her assistant.

Kara has every intention to cheat on this test. She has superspeed, supersenses, the best computer cores that can exist in normal space and new revision of her camera drone that she disguised as a sharpie marker and tucked behind her ear.

_The only problem is if nothing happens or if I write it up wrong. So basically, everything is still a problem._

[Kolex. Monitor Twitter and photo posting sites. If something is getting attention, point me at it.]

[Yes, Lady Kara. Operation Ice Cream in progress.]

[What?]

[Ice cream is something that needs a scoop.]

Kara snorts.

[Decent joke.  You're improving.]

“Danvers, Kara!” calls the intercom.

Kara jogs over to the table where miss Grant sits, head down in contracts, copy and photo layouts.

“I'm your ten-thirty, miss Grant."

Cat Grant doesn’t even glance up.

“Tell me why I should be talking to you. Your outfit is disgraceful. Those suspenders and slacks look like you were deemed too frumpy to fight in World War One. So, ten-thirty...why should I talk to you instead of sending you, your suspenders, fossilized slacks and tweed back where you came from to be in the background of a newspaper picture about a lynching?”

 _So maybe the men’s clothing and Mason’s old-school idea was a mistake,_ Kara decides. _Thought vintage was in._

“Ahem,” Kara coughs. “Look up.”

Cat lifts her head, finally able to see Kara’s face, hands and hair. Billionaire or not, she blushes.

“Well. Shit. As a reporter I should remember my own advice. Take in the whole scene before editorializing,” she huffs, tossing her pen down.

“I don't often apologize to people, but here I am making a point of it. What I said was wrong and I'm sorry."

"But my overall point about your outfit stands. You tower above every man in the line behind you and from what little I can see, if you dressed like a sane person, you could walk into any room, anywhere and draw the attention of everyone there.”

“So unless this is accidental, unless you were attacked and those clothes were forced upon you, your are committing deliberate assault on my eye health, my sanity, and defiling the strength, grace and sacred power of the female form.”

_So she’s maybe a smidge bi-curious?_

Kara blows out a long breath.

“Apology accepted. The insult was much cooler the second time. Lyrical, in fact.”

The tiniest flicker of amusement tugs at the right side of Cat’s mouth.

“Pitch a story, woman.”

[Four minutes, thirty seconds remaining.]

[Thank you, Kolex.]

“I have two. Aliens and police brutality.”

“National Enquirer is in Los Angeles, dear. Next!”

Kara lays out the photos Emilia gave her. Cat’s eyebrow goes up.

“Aliens. Aliens living here in National City, in poverty, suffering, because our government would rather deny their existence than have the debate about their rights.”

“There is a squatter’s camp of aliens in an old middle school on 12th and Reagan. Children, mothers, couples, living in complete filth because they lack identification. They live in a building with asbestos and air toxicity that exceeds EPA guidelines for a toxic waste dump. Because if they go outside, they can be shot down like animals. Zero consequences. Murder laws do not apply. Animal cruelty laws do not apply. Open season, even more than black people.”

Cat picks her pen back up and rapidly taps it on a stack of paper, sometimes lifting it and twirling it between her fingers while she thinks. It’s clearly a nervous tic that she’s redirected into something more stylish.

“I can’t let you do the police brutality angle. You haven’t earned that yet -- too close to an editorial -- and I can’t having a black woman doing a police brutality stor-”

Kara opens her mouth to complain, catches herself and ends up making a gulping sound. Cat’s upraised forefinger was enough to stop her cold. Cat mouth curls closer to a smile.

“Unless I know she is a _goddamned_ _man-eating shark..._ unless I know her writing skills, tenacity, judgement and grasp of the subject are such that the piece is so brutal the Grand Wizard of the KKK will find himself begging for mercy at her feet.”

“But if you want to waste your time on aliens, do it. Take my new photographer,” Cat says, nodding to the fleet of vans.

“If you’re right, then CatCo scoops every outlet in human history and if that’s the case I want good photos. And…” Cat flips through her notes and finds Kara's resume.

“Korrine, apparently. Korrine. if you are wasting my time or pranking me, you will not only not get this job, you will not get any job at any of my companies or their subsidiaries. Clear?”

“Crystal, ma’am. See you at,” Kara checks her watch. “Five-thirty.”

“Miss Tessmacher!” Cat bellows.

Tessmacher appears after sprint from a nearby table, wobbling to get her balance back.

 _Girl needs to wear flats with a boss like that,_ Kara thinks.

“Send Jimmy Olsen with this one.”

“Of course, miss Grant.”

Tessmacher directed Kara over to the news vans where a huge black man is busily rifling through memory cards, sitting near a stack of cameras, lenses, bags and lights.

“Mr. Olsen?”

“Call me Jimmy. Kara, right?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

He looks up.

“Damn, girl. I thought one of the 49ers linebackers was coming to sack me.”

For some reason, his teasing doesn’t bother Kara. Usually she hates it when men comment on her size and her muscles. Jimmy just seems...amused. Like he’s glad there’s one other person his size in the room.

Hopping off the truck, he holds out his hand, huge grin on his face.

“Quite the grip,” he jokes.

He’s clearly not used to dealing with women or maybe people close to his own height, because he keeps catching himself trying to look down only to snap back up and resume eye contact. Like he keeps expecting to have to look down to look at her face.

“Jimmy, my face is up here. As far off the ground as yours. Unless you’re wearing five inch heels?”

She lifts her foot and wiggles her workman’s boots. He laughs, the sound booming around the metal paneling inside the van.

“Get in. Where is this place?”

He starts the van up.

“Marion Crane Middle School. Condemned building on 12th and Reagan.”

“Isn’t that closed for asbestos?”

“Covered in sheeting, yeah. But my source knows of a tunnel into the squatters camp. Also the fumes from the refinery upwind get trapped in the sheeting and build up. Means that the air’s pretty nasty. Chlorine, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide...the works.”

“Poison building, And we’re looking for aliens. Cat finally snapped and asked you to kill me?” he jokes.

She reaches into her bag and holds out a gas mask.

“Military surplus. I have a buddy who’s active. She helped me replace and check the filters. It’s actually why the aliens chose the building. This species can deal with that atmosphere but it means no one human can take their stuff. Four or five species, actually.”

“Species? They’re not Kryptonians? I mean, I knew they existed--Clark fights a monster every week or so--but not that any aliens lived here besides you two.”

“Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy. This is going to blow your fucking mind!”

Kara laughs for five blocks straight.

“I needed that. So you’re _that_ Jimmy. I should have realized, I mean, anyone who’s his best friend wouldn’t be like some tiny, shy person. Still...his descriptions of you had me looking for someone a bit mor-”

“White?” Jimmy demands.

“No, not really. I was going to say I was seeing someone more...timid? Maybe that’s just how he sees it because he keeps saving you.”

“Unfair,” Jimmy complains. “Not my fault I have to duck when he and Lois drag me to Iraq to do combat photography. He’s bulletproof and him being there _is_ her bulletproof vest.”

“You’re right, Jimmy. Our perspective affects our way of describing the world...and I’ve only ever heard of you from his perspective. Were all just living inside our own skulls, trying to figure out what’s really outside our eyeballs.”

“Ew...but you’re right. Kal always said you were the smart one.”

“Damn right I am,” Kara huffs. “Pretty one, too.”

“Speaking of smart, you should make sure that the camera you pick has a glass lens that is not coated. Chlorine-sodium-hydrogen compounds in the air might have a bleaching effect. That might eat plastic or soft coating but isn’t going to be able to eat glass.

“So how’s Lois?”

“She’s good,” Jimmy chuckles. “Alura’s...six and two sixths? She makes sure we’re all very precise. I’m sure she’s terrorizing the entire school by now. Lara’s just starting to talk in sentences which is going to be fun given her mom’s potty mouth.”

“Alura?” Kara asks, her voice a trembling whisper.

“You didn’t know? Alura and Lara. Your mom and his. Lois’ idea I’m pretty sure.”

Kara blinks stupidly at the windshield, tears spotting her shirt.

“I think I was so busy baby-talking and sneaking them cookies saying how cute they were...it never came up. I’m just Kay-Kay to them and they're so cute!” she squeals. “I get distracted.”

“Lois will _love_ that. I’ll have to tell her right now,” he jokes, grabbing his phone.

Kara whips it out of his hand, fiddles with it and hands it back. Jimmy tries to unlock it and fails, five times in a row.

“You should’ve run the security patch. It just let me keep trying.”

She reaches over and uses her thumbprint to unlock it.

“That’s…” he stops to think. “Ten thousand combinations? And you just...course you did.”

Kara laughs.

“I know, right? Cell phone companies are so not prepared for superpowers!”

“Take a left,” she instructs, pointing at the fence around the parking lot.

“Mask on. Let’s go meet the new kids on the block.”

 

* * *

  **April 4, 2006 | Kara Danvers**

National City, California

CatClo Plaza

The Outdoor Arts Plaza AKA “Seashell”

 

Kara plops down on the back of the van’s floor beside Jimmy. He still looks broken after talking to, sitting with, and taking pictures of the squatters. He flips through photos of communal trash piles, rag-wrapped bits of sharp metal where lockers broke loose, desks used to reinforce the roof. He turns to one of Emilia’s pride and joy: that stupid propane stove that she is clever enough to not kill herself with. Barely.

 _Good waffles,_ _though_.

“It’s rough, huh?” she asks, patting him on the back. “They deserve better.”

“I had no idea.”

She sighs.

“You know what’s funny? I had the same sort of ‘oh shit’ moment about a week after I landed. There’s this great family in Midvale--the Williams--who Alex somehow convinced to teach me how to behave as a black woman in this country. On Krypton, this…”

She waves at her body.

“Just meant that I inherited the best of all the good looks from my mother, my aunt, Laita-El, Shala Ina-Zod and Konna Ina-Zenn in the genetic constructors and birthing matrix. It wasn’t a color, it was a heritage...reminded people of some of my most gorgeous grandmothers and great-aunts.”

“So I had to be taught how to act 'black'.  I had to be taught what that was.  The Williams are great. I think I’m basically the honorary oldest sister. No idea why they never asked where I’m actually from.”

“Really? You had to have training?”

“I had to have training to act like I _need to breathe_ on this planet. So yeah, I had to be coached how to act submissive to police or not stand up to mall cops and not put things in my pocket before buying them. For years I didn’t get it...at all. Felt like an imposter. I would fly or take the bus so I hardly got behind a wheel, let alone got pulled over. Then Nadia and I get pulled over together and...”

Jimmy laughs. “You snapped. Clarke saved a plane to come out, you basically declared war on the police. Which, I will not lie, made me yell at my TV like it was the Chiefs winning the Superbowl. Lucy was _pissed_ at me.”

“Lucy, as in Lucy Lane?”

He pulls out his phone and shows off a couple’s selfie.

“Clarke got the tall sister, you got the hot one with the snazzy uniform. Congrats.”

Jimmy laughs.

“So...you used to date Emilia, who has like, snaky brain ropes on her head. And the girl you just broke up with had dreadlocks, judging by your phone background. Is that your thing? A dreadlock kink?”

She offers a fist bump and he gladly takes it.

“Nicely done. You’re learning how to tease me. But...no. Luck of the draw. Since Nadia and I cut it off, she demanded I do online dating.  I’ve been on the dating apps and so far, I’ve only hit on guys. Without ‘locks.”

“Guys?” he asks, cracking another Coke.

Kara swigs hers.

“Yeah. I’m pan. Lot of the aliens I know are, especially if they date outside their species. If you, Jimmy, realized were willing to fuck a woman of another species, the idea of fucking a human man tends to get less weird _fast_. The idea of a being with a transwoman would probably just stop registering. I do know some straight aliens and some gay-only aliens, but the switch hitters usually are into way more variety than just basic bitches and gym rats.”

“You look human,” he reminds her. “Even with the hair and the curves and the muscles, you could be human. Just one in a million with perfect genes except for going gray early...”

Kara sighs.

“Kryptonians are the only species that looks that way. Anyone else who looks fully human is either a shapeshifter, a Coluan wearing expert-level makeup, or someone wearing a disguise kit.

“A what?”

“It’s sort of like a hologram, except touchable. Lets you hide whatever you actually in a human-looking shell. They’re not cheap but if you need one to get a job...it can be worth it.”

Jimmy nods.

“So, if you wanted to, you would be the only kind of alien with the option of a husband, two point five kids and a dog and none of them ever knowing?”

Kara shivers.

“Exactly. Like Clark, I suppose. It’s why I would never have that. I’m not sure if Clark and Lois have had the talk yet but when she ages and he doesn’t...they’re going to need an excuse.”

“Wow. Are you always this heavy? I feel like I fell asleep and woke up in an ethics class.”

Kara laughs.

“Nah. Usually I’m more of a laugh. Just...focused, I guess. Want to impress miss Grant. Photo me, brother.”

Jimmy’s oversized laugh fills the van. He kicks out the memory card and puts it in her hand.

“Back in a jif.”

Kara disappears into the van to type up her story. He waits for her to come back despite having a thousand other things he’s probably supposed to be doing. Because he wants to be friends or wants to ask her something or just--poor boy--wants to make sure she’s safe.

_Sweet guy. Guess I know what Lucy saw in him._

She comes back with a portable printer and her huge, steel-cased laptop, the keys still cherry red from the friction.

“That’s...a custom model isn’t it?” he jokes.

Kara laughs.

“What? I type fast! Stands out less than carrying an _undisguised_ workstation-class intelligence. Plus,” she smiles, tapping a switch.

Four compartments open, two on each side.

“Transmat beacon for emergency evac,” she explains, holding out the buzzing white rod.

“Medical omni-tool. Scalpel, forceps, bandage extruder, the whole bit.”

He scoops up the paperback-sized brick of cold blue metal.

“So it just like…”

“Forge an eggbeater,” Kara commands.

A transparent gray spike rises out of the device before swelling and splitting off into a pair of eggbeater blades. Kara snaps them off.

“Neat, huh?”

“Those two?”

“ _Shadowside_  pistol. Officer’s sidearm. Packs a punch but...mostly for show.  In case someone needs to see a gun to catch on.”

She picks up a balled up wad of fabric and tosses it to him.

“Oof,” he grunts, letting it fall onto the concrete. “That’s like a barbell, except it’s the size of a baseball.”

“Armored cloth. Two particle thick layer of neutron star matter in a carbon nanotube and composite alloy weave. Energized by micro-omegahedrons to help support its weight and anchor to surfaces. Weighs a lot but it takes up to a thirty kiloton blast on the surface. As far as I’ve tested, anyway. Enough to get three adults under it and heavy enough to keep them there but not heavy enough to crush them.”

“I have five of those blankets in my main kit. In case I ever need to do like, a hostage rescue.”

“Main kit?”

Kara raises a keyfob and clicks it.

A massive, all black motorcycle chirps at the parking meter. Both the front and rear wheels are sunk into pyramids-shaped metal housings and the seat has a three-fold piece of metal accordion-ed and clamped against the passenger side.

The sedan next to it is actually shorter from nose to tail lights and only slightly wider. It also can’t break orbit or do zero-to-Mars in 54 seconds.

“My ride. I call her Rook. Like the big, black, smart bird. African relative of the raven.”

“What,” he laughs. “Your suit? So is that a Transformer?”

Kara holds up the key fob, pointing to a key sunk in the back with the sigil on it.

“Just a ride. Built her myself. But...I push this and the armor transmats on to my body from the storage compartments there. Suit up time is 670 nanoseconds. Currently.”

“Uh-huh. And transmat. That’s the beam-me-up thing that gives Clarke the willies?”

Kara rolls her eyes.

“Clarke never had to write a term paper on the ‘safety improvements to the entanglement bridge and matter lathe array in the last five years’,” she drones, mimicking her old teacher.

“And the scariest part,” Kara jokes, reaching into her shoulder bag. “The big guns.”

“That’s a roll of pennies.”

“Correction. It is _five_ rolls of pennies. And pennies are _copper_ and the most dangerous IEDs used by terrorists are just explosives used to throw shaped charges of molten copper.  I’ve got a good throwing arm.”

“I don’t do the heat vision thing like Clark does...why does he use his _eyes?_ ” she demands. “Sounds painful. Tell him to see me. I’ll get that straightened out.”

She pulls one out of the roll, holding it between thumb and forefinger. It melts and drips into her palm where the slag instantly cools and her body takes the excess back in.

“So that’s ammo?”

“Boom! Long as I have some pocket change, I’m good to go.”

Jimmy snorts.

“Because someone is going to successfully steal _your purse?_ ” He teases.

“Eh. Style points, I guess. Ooh, there’s Winn.”

“What’s a Winn?” Jimmy asks.

Before Kara can answer, a roar splits the air. A squat alien with ridged green skin on his bald head is lifting a cop car with one hand and holding a white-hot axe in the other. He feints like he was going to throw the car into the fountain. The crowd screams and ducks away.

“Human filth! Surrender the one you call Black Knight to me and I will make your deaths quick, if not painless. Get on your knees!” he bellows.

“Excuse me!” calls a voice over the loudspeakers. Cat Grant just appeared on every TV in the plaza, broadcasting from what must be her office.

“I am Queen here! No one bows to anyone else! If you’re going to be at a private event, you need to check in. Table’s over there.”

With that, Cat pokes the off button with the pen she was brandishing at the camera. The screens go black.

“Oh my god,” Kara laughs. “I have _got_ to work with that woman.”

“Right after I drop him. Fucking Thursdays,” Kara groans.

“Want me to…” Jimmy suggests, tapping his watch, the one Clark gave him.

“That’s sweet but...I got this,” Kara assures him. “Just...watch my bike, ‘kay?”

[Blue Beetle, tell Winn to take cover and to use the barrier harness we designed. Summon Kleenex for search and rescue and Koncave and Konvex for damage control. And email Winn my story as well, please.]

[Done, done and done. About time the little bothers earned their keep.]

[Do I detect jealousy, Blue Beetle?]

[Never!]

“Yo! Scaly green guy!” Kara bellows, tossing a decorative rock at him. He turns his massive head to track her.

“Females do not speak unless spoken to,” he growls.

“Women!” she jokes. “We’re _super_ bad at being told what to do!”

Palming a dozen pennies and rolling the molten blob in her hand into slivers, she waits for him to turn his weapon towards her. She throws hard and a spray of superheated metal tears into his skin and flattens as it goes.  The bone, muscle and nerves beneath are smashed and and when the force reaches the other side and the scales, the arm explodes.

His weapon drops to the ground along with the bottom two-thirds of the arm holding it.

“Shooter!” someone hollers. The entire crowd scrambles for cover, assuming some crazy person with an assault rifle just showed up.

_Fuck…had not thought of that angle.  It’s time. Wish I’d dressed in something handmade. This stuff will be ruined._

Kara clicks the keyfob and launches herself towards him at the same instant. The bodysuit and face mask appears with a flash of light, the barrier fabric shaping itself to her skin and cinching tight. The inner plates and the mechanical layer perched atop them follow. Finally the outer plates appear, interlocked and overcharged with excess energy from the transmat. She keeps the helmet visor set on transparent.

With Scion cocooning her, Flamebird and its sheath click into place on her back. She draws the sword and levels it at his neck. The diamond-shaped tip hums with kinetic barrier fields.

Hovering beside him she can now see into the car and see more than just the heat of still-living bodies. Both men are bleeding from head wounds from broken glass.

“You good, officers?”

Both nod.

“Let the nice policemen go,” Kara growls. “This is you and me.”

“Though I would like to know why you’re here. Don’t recall pissing off any Klingon cosplayers lately.”

Someone in the crowd sniggers.

“I,” he bellows. “Am the mighty Vartox, Chief of Clan Urgal.”

“Clan Urgal is gone. The last one...Jilyr, was it? She married outside the clan,” Kara hollers. “Can see why.”

_Let them hear.   Superman never sasses.  Time to set myself apart._

“You,” he laughs. “You know your history! You are the one I seek.”

“I can deal with that. Drop the car.”

He complies. Kara swings her blade and catches the flat side under the suspension long enough to break the fall. The cruiser slams into the ground and pops its tires.

Vartox slams into her from behind, driving her into the concrete.

 _Cheap shot but I should have seen it coming.  Need to stop negotiating. Should have just taken the car._ As she hops back on her feet, she sees him taking up his weapon with his remaining hand.

He stalks over to her, sneering.

_If he’s going to give me time, I’ll take it._

[Blue Beetle, analyze weapon.]

[Valeronian fire-axe. Generates temperatures up to four million degrees and contains an outer layer of N-th metal, which can penetrate your suit...and skin. Custom-forged by males as a rite of passage into adulthood. He marks it with his name once forged. If allowed to breed, the wives' names are also inscribed.]

[Only one name.]

[Precisely. He may be attempting to prove his worth by killing you. However the weapon has a weakness: it contains a potentially critical mass of plutonium in the shaft to power the heating element and stabilize the N-th Metal. Stored in three separate chambers. Highlighting.]

[Estimated yield?]

[Fifteen kilotons.]

Kolex activates the heads-up and puts triangular marks on the weapon at three evenly-spaced points, barely two feet apart.

[And I can punch uranium into exploding...which is less frisky.  Great.]

[Removing one at a time ensures lack of critical mass. Recommend not breaking it over your knee, Lady Kara.]

[Put on some tunes, Blue Beetle. Let’s give the folks a show.]

[Highway to the Danger Zone? Really?]

[You are over fifty.]

Vartox swings down and Kara rolls to the side, bringing her boot up into his kneecap. The bellow of pain is nice but the crunch is quieter than she’d hoped. _Must be tougher than your average Valeronian because of all the brains and charm he didn’t get._

Kara pushes off and bounces to her feet, balling her fists. He swings his stump at her, spraying her with awfulness.

[Blue Beetle, is that…]

[Sentencing tattoo, yes. It appears he was imprisoned, but not yet pardoned, from Kryptonian Custody. Specifically…]

Kara remembers seeing Astra’s face, hard as stone, as the guards blazed the marks into her bicep. Seeing her mother’s tears drop silently into her robes because she couldn’t show emotion while sentencing her twin sister.

_“Be strong, little one. Become everything I dreamed you are. This is not your end...or even mine. Perhaps your grandchildren can come fetch me.”_

Sixty cycles. Four-hundred-forty-two years on Earth. But not life…not for a woman like her, in her prime. There was a chance. Astra’s admission of guilt saved her that and made her soldier’s sentences little more than symbolic. Leniency she received for surrendering honorably along with her testimony detailing her and Non’s plot.

[Vhoc’s Gate prison.]

[Yes, Lady Kara.]

“So...nice ink,” Kara sneers.

Vartox charges again, swinging for her neck.

 _First lesson of sword fighting, little one. If you need to use your blade to stop his, you’ve already made a mistake. Metal breaks. Your wits,_ Astra had told her, _never do._

Kara ducks the swing, albeit more narrowly than she’d like. She grabs a chunk of concrete, crushes it and throws it into his eyes. He coughs and sputters. Swinging her legs out to topple him, she soars up and dives, dropping an elbow strike on his nose--that crunch was awesome!--and speeds over to where Flamebird landed and yanks it from the asphalt.

He staggers to his feet with blood streaming from his nose only to find Flamebird’s tip held a hair’s breadth from his left eye.

“Yield, Vartox. I would rather not kill the last of a line.”

“If I yield to a female…” he snarls.

“You live. You live to find out. Who knows?” she shrugs.

“Maybe there’s a human woman with a pitiful mate and you’re somehow a step up.”

[Blue Beetle, traffic scan. Military frequencies first.]

[Police units en route, six minutes out. DEO-2 strike team is four minutes out by helicopter.]

“How did you escape Vhoc’s Gate?” Kara demands.

Vartox laughs.

“I did not. It is a pirate kingdom now, run by the inmates.”

_No, no, no!_

Kara can’t bear to think it but she knows her aunt Astra would not allow that kind of thing. If Vhoc’s Gate is some hellhole, someone has to fight and kill Astra before they could make it that way.

“I have no more use for you, unmated,” Kara sighs.

She angles her sword to try to drive him back with it. “Kneel!”

Something collides with her side--hard--and pain blazes up her ribcage. Alarms warble inside her helmet. She looks down and sees a shard from his axe gripped in his bloody fist, still white-hot. One end is buried in his palm, one between her ribs. The coating of N-th metal is cooling and sloughing off, but it was there long enough to do its job.

“Fighting him would have been an honor. You...were just exercise.”

 _The injury is minor,_ she reminds herself. _Muscle and a nick on a rib. Nothing else hurts. Alex could close it with three stitches._

The monster inside her disagrees. It has been threatened.

Tension seethes through her muscles, they’re so clenched so hard she’s afraid they’ll tear off the bone. Heat builds on her skin, triggering every vent in her suit at once.

[Blue Beetle! I cannot turn into a Worldkiller right now! We need to activate the behavioral lock! Options! Which control programs have we not tried?]

[Twenty-two, fourteen, and six.]

[We don’t have a binary pulsar handy! And six isn’t safe here! Humans break easy!]

[Twenty-two it is.]

All seventeen of the control word sequences play over and over and over, recorded in Kara’s own voice. The same ones her father repeated in the recording. The same ones warlords once used to make their pet monster’s hearts beat, lungs expand, and wake them up before slaughter.

Kara cannot think, she can only feel. Rage.

The world around her becomes a masterpiece painting.  Still and glorious.

This is far more than the slow-down she has felt before. The water in the fountain has not only slowed its motion and her senses are not only sharpened. The buzz of light and sound and heat and pressure on her skin she lives in is no longer a buzz. It’s an orchestra...with notes and tempo and...meaning. She can make out the melody of vibrations of the electron shells in the nearest hydrogen atoms. The radio signals from the news vans bounce like a handful of colorful rubber bands were tossed at nearby buildings. The sting of cosmic ray particles strike her back in precisely five places.

Kolex’s pulse snaps her out of it with a single instant of tremendous pain.

[Lady Kara!]

 _Kara. That name. I know it,_ she finally realizes. _It’s...almost my name._

_You are Ktharra, daughter of Zor-El and Alura-El, Scion of Erok-El, last of the Great House’s bloodlines. You will take your place as the Fist of Krypton. You will rebuild the Empire, exceeding its former glory and taking what is yours, striding the universe in fire and ash. You shall be its first and last Empress, ever-living, unquestioned, feared by all._

[Lady Kara!  Do you remain...you?]

[Yes. No. Mostly.  We’re having a little chat, the subconscious engrams and me. It’s...feisty but sort of one-track, you know? But thanks to your little recording and the zap, I’ll be fine. Thanks for…]

[For hurting you? I have never wanted to do something less, my Lady...my friend.]

[Were the Valeronians...]

[Yes. Extremely non-compliant. Multiple suicide bombings. They were nearly annihilated by a Destroyer team sent during the Imperial period.]

[Good. Ought to make him think before he stabs.]

Kara puts her hand around Vartox’s throat. Something in his eyes changes. Like he’s seeing something he recognizes. A stream of what must be piss is spattering the cement below him.

“You...should...not...have...done...that,” she pants.

“You live because your blood would disgust me more than your stench.”

_Too much, I wonder?_

She grabs his intact arm and twirls as fast as she can, gathering momentum as Vartox spins around her. She releases him and he vanishes into the sky with a cry of pain and a sonic boom.

Though she never learned it in class, she knows Vartox has sixteen minutes. She remembers that now. He can survive for sixteen minutes in full vacuum before...before something she wishes she _didn’t_ remember happens to his insides.

She glances at the target on her visor inner edge and triggers her radio.

“DEO-2, I am a friendly civilian asset of alien origin. Hostile is off the field and headed to impact the moon. I am standing down.”

“You are not allowed on this channel! But, uh, copy that.”

“Everyone all right?” she hollers.

A cheer rises through the crowd, even some who were hunkered behind tables and fallen broadcast gear. One man is stuck under a car so she speeds over, throws it off him and holds out her hand.

“Who are you?” he asks as he gets his weight on his good leg.

“I…”

“Supergirl!” a boy calls out. “See? The S! Just like Superman. Except she’s Supergirl!”

Kara kicks off and gives the boy a loop-de-loop for making her laugh before dropping between some billboards. The armor transmats back to its containers inside of Rook where some repair gel will hopefully suffice to repair it in time.

[Kolex, was the sigil lighting on the entire time?]

[It was. You removed the lighting entirely and worked transparent casing into the propulsion and defense field coils to create the pattern, remember?]

[No. And...I want you to kick my ass if you find me not doing proper lab logging in the future.]

[Of course.]

“Winn, you all right?”

“All right?” he shouts. “Are you kidding? I just got a job.”

“Do tell.”

“So, when you started fighting him I thought...hmm. This could be hell on a server rack. I threw that mesh we bought for the teardown bench over the server I was working on. When you guys started your sword-fight, some kind of magnetic pulse _cooked_ all the others.  All except mine.  The website is still up.”

“Apparently the guy who _would_ have been my boss didn’t think of that kind of protection made sense for the gear.  How often does an EMP happen, he said.  Cat’s head cybersecurity person was pretty interested in how a thirty-dollar stack of mesh blankets protected the gear."

“I’m so happy for you.”

“Happy for me?” he laughs.  “Pull up the listings, since you and I have the only non-baked phones here.”

Kara pulls up the ‘Careers’ page and promptly drops her phone, which triggers its kinetic barrier and bounces back into her hand. She could swear the buzzing of the fields was her phone laughing at her.

“I’m...the new assistant to Cat Grant?”

“You’re supposed to be in her office in like, ten minutes.”

“Gotta go, thanks!”

She triggers her secure radio.

“DEO-2, keep an eye on his axe. It has enough material to go Hiroshima on you if it gets broken. And please retrieve the alien’s arm. It can be reattached and heal with full functionality if done in the next nine hours. That should leverage him into giving some information.”

“Uh...Yes ma’am. Command has instructed me to defer to you in this matter and give you the callsign Tinkerbell.”

“Ugh. We’ll...leave it at that for now. Give me a location to lock him up at and I’ll have him there and drooling in the dirt in nine minutes.”

Latitude and longitude numbers come over the radio and Kolex translates them into a location...which is apparently a former silver mine in Arizona.

[Kolex, I need a warp-path from here, to the crater Vortax just made in the moon, to DEO custody that doesn’t microwave anybody. Max time is eight minutes.]

[Calculated. You can do it in under four.]

Kara vanishes with a crack and a blast of wind, not caring one bit that her bowler hat dropped into a puddle.

 

 

Kara brushes the last moon dust off her jacket sleeves and strides--trying hard not to _strut_ \--down the hall towards Cat’s office.

“Korrine, so glad you could join us. I’m even gladder to see that you...burned that terrible thing that was on your head.”

“It blew away.”

Cat’s mouth twitches in another one of her blink-and-you-miss-it smiles.

“Well, seeing as how I can’t trust you to dress yourself…” she stares at Kara’s pocket, where no doubt the candy bar she grabbed downstairs is poking out now.

“...or behave like an adult and seeing how your article was trash but at least it was _printable_ trash, clearly I cannot let you out of my sight.”

“Glad to be on the team.”

Cat hums.

“We’ll see. Now, I need a latte. Cinnamon, almond milk, no sugar. And you need to find me one between here and Maintenance in the basement. Because my chief of facilities needs to get his ass up here. I’ll be damned if this place is knocked down for more than a day because of an attack by the physical manifestation of medieval gender roles.”

“Funny thing. The moment I posted your article, we had a concert schedule request in the plaza three months from now. Never heard of them but apparently it’s selling out. Must be some underground band for posers.”

Kara’s pen dashes across the notepad.

“Latte on the double. Cinnamon-plus, almond milk-plus, sugar-minus. Find it in the basement. Facilities guy gets his ass up here. Damn the torpedoes, the show must go on. Did I get all that right?” Kara asks after reading it back.

This time Cat’s mouth stays in a smile.

“Cheekier than I prefer...but accurate. At least you’ve got some nerve, little one. We’ll see if that works out to your benefit or not. Chop-chop, Kara.”

"One more thing. I need an interview with this Black Knight. Can I get your phone number?

Now it's _Cheshire_ Cat Grant smiling at her.

"Why me?"

"Honey, how many six-foot-plus black women with a fitness magazine physique and having a legendary good hair day do you think were in that square?"

 

* * *

 

**April 4, 2006 | Kara Danvers**

National City, California

National City University

Honors Dorm, Room 713

 

Kara swipes her keycard, yawning for the first time in she can't remember how many months. She's exhausted but it's for all the best reasons. Cat was on her every moment, either berating her for a mistake or looking at something, nodding once and telling her she had an hour to do it. Kara learned the dance...anything that Cat had to speak about was something not good enough. Anything good enough was something that was _no longer her problem_ and she had other things to deal with.

_Bit scary that she knows I'm...Black Knight...Supergirl? No, those don't feel quite right..._

"Alex?" Kara whispers.

She looks around the room. Alex isn't here but the light is on in the mini-kitchen on her side.

On the table is a thoroughly destroyed box of chocolates and six shiny gray eggs the size of basketballs. Most of the shells are still stiff and hard but of them is already cracked and judging by the trail of wrappers and cherry creme leading back into the eggshell, the hatchling had its birthday snack.

The note on the desk reads: 

 

 

* * *

**My sweet Kara,**

 

**Sorry I had to run before we could link up. I wanted to thank you for saving my life--and the baby's--and invite you to its birthing ceremony. Which is in Hawaii because it's a warm ocean. And there’s prayers. It’s a thing? I feel like this mom business will have a learning curve but Nakka's going to get me through it. She wants you there. We all do.**

**I hope the chocolate doesn't melt before you get home. I know you miss your homeworld so I put out some feelers. Apparently there is one pet breeder who sells pygmy _galata_ here on Earth and his best queen just had a clutch. Big one.  Strong ones have tough eggs, he said.  **

**We kept there because they’re good with kids. You should probably invite some friends over before they hatch unless you want all six of them to imprint on you!**

 

**All my love,**

**Emilia**

* * *

 

 "In here, Kara."

Kara pushes the kitchen door open and sees Alex staring dumbly into a cup of coffee.  Five hardboiled eggs sit in front of her.  Perched on her head is a winged lizard with gleaming black scales and a fringe of dark red spines behind its head. Leaving Alex's head to hang--wobbly on its new wings--in front of Kara's face, it hisses angrily, spreads its spines wide and sprays a few droplets of liquid that sputter into sparks.

"Hi, Alex. Sorry I'm late."

"Heard from Winn that you got the job."

"Yeah, that's why I was late," Kara laughs.

"So."

"So...yeah."

Kara throws her arms around Alex. The passenger on Alex's head nips Kara and whines when its teeth glance off.

"I love you so much, Alex. I always will. You can count on me. Never think I hate you, ever. Understood, soldier?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"OK. So why so glum then? The _galata_ seems to like you."

"The dragon's fine. She's a sweetheart."

Alex tosses a hard-boiled egg from the stack up in the air.  The dragon-nymph takes wing and, snags the egg and proceeds to ravage it.  Flapping mightily to carry the extra weight, she throws her head side-to-side in mid-air before gulpin down the chunks while hovering over the general vicinity of the sink.

_Training starts early for Alex's dragon._

It then blinks back and nestles its tiny claws in Alex's hair, rattling its neck scales and drooping its chin on to her forehead.  It wasn’t about to waste a nanosecond it would have spent flying down when it could be cuddling.

"Just...I think I'm...I think I like women.  Sexually."

"That's not the worst thing, Alex. I kind of enjoy it, myself."

"It's really not," Alex agrees. "For a civilian."

"Yeah, that bit's not ideal. Maggie?"

"Might have something to do with Maggie," Alex replies.

"See! A smile."

"So what's the next thing we need to do to move being in love with Maggie from sad to happy?"

"Dunno. We need to meet in secret. Maybe you could come up with some kind of escape route? Transmat beacon."

"I can do better. I'll loan you a control system and two beacons for now and spike down some endpoints wherever you want your date nights. Sky's the limit. Anywhere in the world."

"Loan me, why loan?"

"Because I figured out how to build a one-person spaceship _from scratch_ using only what I had or could make _here_ and sold the design to a dealer. He's going to trade me the first unit for any ship I want."

"Oh."

"And he has a Coluan research cruiser with working cloaking device," Kara teases. "And...and I cannot believe I'm saying this. A mint condition _Rao's Sword_ class infiltrator. From the shipyards at Argo, built thousands of years before the shutdown. Those were prototypes. We only built I think ten. Small and flashy and they did some unbelievable tricks but stupid expensive and impractical...entirely different tool chain to build them."

"Well, that's nice," Alex mumbles.

"Either of those ships would let you pick up Maggie from _high orbit_ with a transmat, fly anywhere in the world for dinner and not a single device on Earth or one I can build, could see you coming or going."

"Wow. But you should take the Infiltrator, Kara."

"Pfft. It's OK. You need a ship more."

"Exactly. _A ship._ Not some treasured example of Krypton's glory days. Doesn't this guy take money? Or do I have to invent a new photon torpedo?"

Kara pours herself the rest of the coffee.

"Course he takes money. It would just take like, ten more examples of my single-seater to pay for the Coluan one and that will take me a year."

"Alone, maybe. I want to help. The DEO wants to help you."

"Is that why the soldiers at the fight gave me a callsign?"

"What? You were in a fight? What fight?" Alex yells.

Alex leaps to her feet. The dragon-nymph on her head leaps off, spits some more drops of napalm at Kara and then blinks up to the top of the refrigerator where it lifts its head and gives a squeaky roar.

"Easy there, Gertrude," Alex sighs.

 

* * *

 

**April 4, 2006  | Cat Grant**

National City, California

CatCo Plaza

CatCo Tower

 

There’s someone rapping -- politely -- on Cat’s office window.  Seventy-one stories over the street. Still, if they won’t bother to announce themselves, they will have to wait.

“If that’s Clark Kent, please do come in.  I’ll slip into something more comfortable. I know things that Lois _never will_ ,” Cat husks.  “Promise I won’t tell if you won’t.”

Something thumps against the glass, cracking it.

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Kal!  She was _joking._ ”

Cat looks up, then snickers, then laughs like she hasn’t in years.

Kara--her wet-behind-the ears _assistant_ \--is holding a red-faced Man of Steel up by the scruff of his cape.  He’s conscious but apparently he’s deathly monogamous because he seems more or less catatonic.  Without Kara’s help, he’d probably be on the pavement by now.

She locks eyes with Cat, shrugs and sets him down on the balcony outside the bullpen.

“Miss Grant,” he finally coughs.  “Funny as always, I see.”

She hums.

“May I presume, _Korrine,_ that you brought the puppy of steel up here for a reason?”

“Yes, actually.  I did. I will give you an interview--answer any question except for the name of my human family--and you can print it.  Kal can participate in the interview as well. On one condition.”

Cat chews her lip.

“Name it.”

Kara grins.

“Funny, because it’s about the name.  You may have noticed a little boy calling me Supergirl.  Knowing how you like an organically-branded product and knowing how you like to be first, I assume you were about to blow Twitter up with that?”

Cat huffs.

“Apparently my secret methods are not so secret.”

“Don’t call her -- me, rather -- Supergirl.”

“What’s so bad about girl?” Cat demands, hands on her hips.  “I’m a girl, and I’m powerful and rich a-”

Kara’s hand shoots up.

“All true.  You also donate to that ‘like a girl’ ad campaign.’  However, if you’ll notice,” she ruffles Superman’s hair.

“I’m a bit more earth tones than my cousin, color-wise.”

Cat snorts.

“You mean you’re not the mathematical definition of white corn-fed masculinity?”

Kara clicks her tongue and shoots finger guns at Cat.

“Exactly.  And black men in this country get called ‘boy’ by racists _every single day._  They can be seventy years old, pillar of the community, minister, doesn’t matter.  Not ‘sir’ or ‘hey you’ or ‘hi’.  Just ‘boy’ so as to keep him small, keep him diminished.  Less.  I can personally vouch for it happening to women as well.”

Cat sighs.

“So you want me to re-do an ad campaign I stayed up until....” she glances at her Rolex.  “Almost five for? Because I’m a white woman and you’re a black...I must say, woman seems almost inadequate to describe you.”

 _Down Kitty,_ she reminds herself.   _This is professional and she's not some crew-cut Smith alumna at a sorority dance._

“Yes, if you want that interview.  I won’t answer questions, not addressed to Supergirl.”

“Superwoman, then.”

Kara exhales, loudly.  Somehow, it’s her assistant again, despite the glowing armor and the fact that she’s hovering a foot off the ground with her cape whipping behind her right shoulder.  She has her helmet off and she’s pulled her hair into a hasty, waist-length braid of springy silver curls that catches the moonlight.

“Thank you.  That’s exactly what I was going to suggest, actually.”

“Oh my, I was so nervous!   I mean, you’re my boss, well, other me’s boss and your really _awesome_ and technically it's not even my first day of work and here I am mak-”

“Stop!” Cat demands.

“We’ll forget about the insubordination.  If you are done word-vomiting, we can interview.  Just plunk him on the couch...without breaking it.”

“First off.  Cousins?”

“I hate you,” Kal groans.

“Yeah but I’m older and first in succession.  So shush, baby cousin.”

 

* * *

### BONUS SCENE

* * *

 

**April 4, 2006  | “The Butcher”**

Vhoc’s Gate Prison, Davarr System  
Geosynchronous Polar Orbit over Davarr IV

(2,328 light years from Earth)

  


A twitchy little man with a strangely square head and six eyes approaches the throne.

“Your grace,” he squeaks.  “Word from our scouts. Vortax’s tracker has gone dark.”

A woman with short black hair streaked with one snow-white lock lifts her head to stare him down, her hands red-hot on the makeshift throne’s metal surface.  A scuffed but intact gray bodysuit clings to her and an insignia once sat in the center of it.

“He has failed?”

“Yes, your worship.  Disarmed before he struck a blow and the target--the female--managed to break him even after being wounded with his axe. Our--your--scouts report that she was wearing a suit of powered armor and wielding some kind of energized blade.”

“A pity about Vortax.  Fendra, kill this one.”

Before the man can react, a fist plunges through his torso, spraying blue blood all over the wall.  The woman who swung it places her boot on the body and kicks, sliding it onto the floor.

“Was that necessary?”

“Have you read his file, Fendra?  No? Be glad. _Vhoc’s rotting hole_...it was awful.  That was me letting him do the galaxy a favor before we got justice for his victims.”

Fendra spits on the corpse.

“What else, Fendra?  Any news from the other cell blocks?”

“None, General Ina-Zenn.  We have been unable to make progress except for in the Coluan wing and...” she sighs.  

“No point in establishing a presence there,” her commander agrees.  “So we have six cells, ample food, a few weapons and nothing else. The rioters took the only ships.”

“Our hackers have managed to start the engines.  We may be able to reposition so that we are in the light of the white dwarf, not the red giant.  At that point, the prison and probably the system, is yours for the taking.”

“At least my niece is doing well for herself.  Vartox was a moron but a predictable one. The fact that she beat him is not a surprise.  The fact that it was so one-sided,” Astra sighs. “Is a relief. She paid attention when she was a girl, it seems.”

“She could not have had a better mentor, Gene...Astra.”

“Better,” Astra teases.  “Fen, my dear...you really must stop calling me by my rank when we’re alone.”

She raises her hand to the clasps on the back of her uniform.

“It would be so unethical for an officer to seduce her subordinates.  Wouldn’t it?”

“Unethical, yes,” Fendra gulps.  “But I want it.”

A muscular, well-marked expanse of skin is exposed when Astra begins unclasping her suit.  A dozen scars, faint but real. All of them earned together, side-by-side. Fendra has those scar's mates on her body, plus a handful that Astra managed to avoid.

”As do I,” Astra purrs, her golden eyes gleaming in the dim light.  “Come here, my darling.”

Fendra crashes into her for a kiss that’s all crashing teeth and tongue and nipping each others lips and and a white-knuckled grip on whatever part of each other they can grab.  

Astra realizes that she should have done this twenty cycles ago.  Resigned her post, renounced her unfaithful husband and taken up Fendra instead.  Someone she has fought and bled with, someone who has scrubbed and cauterized her wounds, someone she has eaten fossilized rations beside.  Someone who she spent three weeks in a prefab shelter on a frozen and muddy moon with both their uniforms in tatters and no liquid water to bathe in.  Tired and bruised and musky with the battle's sweat, she and Fen rutted like animals.  It was the moment when the tryst was sparked, although it never bloomed until this place.

She and Fendra worked and fought and stayed so close together that Astra supposes they really stopped being separate bodies after a few cycles serving together.

_Took my heart long enough to catch up._


	13. OVER THE WIRE: Breaking News from CatCo Worldwide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "OVER THE WIRE" is a series of sound bites from news broadcasts or political speeches, covering other events around the world over a period of time.
> 
> This installment covers April 2006 to July 2006.

## OVER THE WIRE:  Breaking News From CatCo Worldwide

 

* * *

 

“We are coming to you live from National City Harbor with some amazing images.  Superwoman has just taken an oil tanker that had broken loose from its moorings and run aground and carried it onto land where the spill can be safely dealt with.  Here are exclusive images of the hero some are calling the Woman of Tomorrow lifting what I’m told is a hundred-thousand-ton ship up onto the tarmac at National City Airport where she was met by EPA crews.  This is Amanda Tolson, CatCo Eight News. Stay safe, National City!”

 

* * *

 

“Heartwarming images from National City’s Crane Park today, where Superwoman assisted a little girl in retrieving ‘Fluffy’, her pet boa constrictor, from a busy street.  I have Jenna here with me, along with her parents.”

“What was it like meeting Superwoman, Jemma?”

“She was nice!  She hugged me! I don’t think she liked Fluffy. She was ‘fraid of her.”

“You’re a funny little girl, Jemma.  High five?"

"Pleasure to meet you. This is Hank Werthers for CatCo Eight News.  Up next--are our scaly friends Superwoman’s Kryptonite? Our panel discusses on Talk of the Town.  Back to you, Amanda.”

 

* * *

 

“Colonel, would you say these reports are accurate?  That there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?”

“Ma’am, I’m not at liber-”

“Your own soldiers, accompanied by Superman, swept hundreds of sites in one night.  None of them contained fissile material or chemical weapons, according to either the Man of Steel or the footage of embedded reporters.  In fact, six of the ‘priority sites’ Mr. Rumsfeld cited before the congressional hearings last month simply do not exist. They were fabricated.”

“Would you care to comment?”

“No ma’am, I cannot comment.  As a soldier, I cannot comment positively or negatively on my civilian superiors.”

“Very well.  Thank you for your service.  Reporting live from Iraq through our friends at CatCo, I am Lois Lane of the _Daily Planet_.”

 

* * *

 

 "You're watching CatCo Worldwide.  Just moments ago, we saw former President George W. Bush leaving the White House for the final time.  After a month of continual anti-war protests in cities around the nation, the president has resigned. Talk of impeachment had reached a fever pitch, spurred by a scathing expose in the Daily Planet."

"In the coming days, the House and Senate will debate the possibility of formal censure and possible impeachment for Vice President Cheney over both his role in the no-bid contract process at Halliburton and his own role in fabricating evidence for the invasion of Iraq."

"For 'Inside the Beltway', this is Siobhan Smythe."

 

* * *

 

 "In what one senator called 'a grand act of statesmanship', Speaker John Boehner of Ohio has resigned from office.  His spokeswoman cited the need for the nation to heal and the need to prevent any appearance of impropriety. We now turn to CatCo's legal analyst, Veronica Cale of Troy, Cale and Sinclair in New York.  Veronica, what does this mean for the line of succession?"

"Simply that  the ball is up in the air.  The next in line would be the president _pro tempore_ of the Senate."

"Who is that?"

"Typically the vice president but with Mr. Cheney now out of office, Mr. Boehner resigning and Democrats in control, the decision would fall to the majority party in the Senate.  With all the changes of the last few days, I would imagine the Democratic party is thinking extremely carefully about who they want to fill that role. It seems likely that whoever takes the job will finish out this presidential term and be up for election in 2008."

"It’s a historic opportunity: a Democratic administration but potentially for ten years, not eight.  Whoever takes office could run and win twice on their own merits, serving nearly ten years total.  Similar to what would have happened had President Lyndon Johnson ran in '68 and won re-election after six years in office."

"Thank you, Veronica.  For CatCo Media,  this is Siobahn Smythe. You're watching Voice of the People."

 

* * *

 

“I’m reporting from above the 402 Freeway where a dangerous act of terrorism by the armored criminal known as Reactron was foiled by a joint effort of both Superman and Superwoman.  Despite having escaped Superman’s reach on four occasions, Reactron, who we know now is Ben Krull, proved unable to withstand a lengthy mid-air brawl with the Maid of Might.  Krull was taken into custody by the Man of Steel who had been summoned by the Justice League to assist.  He will be returned to Metropolis for prosecution.”

“Superman’s deferential posture and unwillingness to enter the fray today has set pundits tongue’s wagging.  Speculation abounds as to the exact nature of Superwoman’s relationship with Superman, who CatCo’s own CEO--Cat Grant--reports are quote ‘family by blood’ and also ‘definitively not a romantic couple’.”

“For CatCo Eight, this is Hank Werthers in the Cat Copter.”

 

* * *

“Madame Senator?  You don’t see that every day.  Talk about girl power, eh?”

Her newest staffer--Kelsey, a farm fresh Kansas girl who graduated Bryn Mawr last month--points out the middle TV, which they always keep tuned to _actual_ news, as opposed to C-Span on the left or Fox on the right.

The senator is a finely aged woman with a swarthy complexion and a bun of black-and-silver hair.  She looks up, her dark eyes fixing the screen with an eagle's stare, cold and unblinking.  Like she could change the events on the other end of the camera with a glare.  Her lips tighten.

  

 

> **A shot from a helicopter shows a swarm of police vans with sirens blaring as they approach the glass pyramid of the Louvre.  Dozens of black-clad men lie face down on the pavement.  A pile of wrecked and melted rifles and rocket launchers is stacked like wood for a bonfire.  Brass casings sit in piles, scattered wherever the men stood when they opened fire on their attackers.**
> 
> **Circling above the prisoners are two fearsome armored women.  One is encased head-to-toe in shiny black plates with a short black cape fluttering in the breeze.  A massive sword in her hands crackles with pale blue lightning. The other wears an ancient brass breastplate and armored skirt to the knee.  She has slung her shield slung over her back and a blazing golden rope is coiled in her hand.**
> 
> **The camera pans down to the reporter.**
> 
> **“My name is Evangeline Corimer, CatCo France.  I’m here at the Louvre where two hours ago, an attempted art robbery by a large and well-armed force of mercenaries was foiled by a lightning-fast response by Wonder Woman and a surprise assist from the American superhero they are calling Superwoman.”**
> 
> **The reporter’s freckled face darkens as the image appears on screen...** **Wonder Woman kissing Superwoman’s cheek amid the smoking wrecks of the robber's armored vehicles.**
> 
> **“The internet is already exploding with an image called the Kiss Seen ‘Round the World.  Peck on the cheek?  Parisian hospitality?  Kiss for luck?  A glimpse into something more?  The world demands an answer but both pairs of lips are sealed."**
> 
> **"Furthermore--and I say this with some disbelief--I interviewed Diana, Princess of Themyscira, Wonder Woman and self-proclaimed Goddess of War this afternoon about this and other topics. This is a direct quote: 'My bedroom is not the world's business’.** **From the city of love, this is CatCo France.”**

 

“Christ on a motherfucking cracker,” the senator groans. “The most talked-about alien on the planet doing that right in the middle of pushing the amnesty bill...cue the 'god hates alien fags' signs in the Bible Belt.  It’s a messaging nightmare!"

She clicks the TV off and throws the remote in her wastebasket.

“Kelsey? Clear my schedule and bring me the scotch.  All of it.  Three glasses.  And get Chris in here too. We’re doing our Friday night poker game a couple days early.”

“I know, right?”  Kelsey laughs, picking the remote out of the trash. “Fucking unfair, the way some girls get all the girls.”

 _Someone’s getting sure of herself,_ the senator thinks.   _Kissing other women?_

_No, no, no. This will not do...question is how to punish a damned Amazon.  Subbing is practically in their blood. Spanking? No...never know when she likes it.  Crop?  Not a fan of that thing...shame to mark up that skin.  Hmm.  Couple of hours tied to a chair with a vibe between her legs should do._

* * *

 


	14. Bended Knee, Blinded Date, Crouching Cat, Snacking Dragon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":  
> Kara has some one-night-stands to take the edge off, Nadia phones in her ABLE work, some things hatch, dragons don't do boundaries, Cat has a very sweet little boy named Carver, Carver could maybe use a service animal, CatCo didn't have a pets at work policy BEFORE, Cat respects Kara's need for Eliza's safety, Kara tries a blind date and...sometimes the thing you want isn't what you came for.
> 
> OUR NEXT EXCITING EPISODE:  
> Kara takes her green-eyed girl out for something sweet, Detective Sawyer keeps dropping off alien prisoners in person for some dumb reason, Maggie looking a mess means Alex is too gay to Army but Vasquez has her back, CADMUS behaves badly, Kara needs quite a gift for quite the woman and we learn some new facts about Elysian Creamery: the only ice cream place with 4,000 locations, an eighty-five percent female staff, not one incident of armed robbery, and a safe place sticker for domestic violence refugees on every door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **STYLE GUIDE:**  
>  " _Italics in quotes_ " are foreign languages.  
> " _< Brackets>_" in quotes and italics are passages translated from a foreign language. Some passages I will not translate.  
>  _Italics_ are thoughts or observations and always the POV character.  
> [Brackets] are interactions with artificial intelligences and cybernetics, verbal or non-verbal.  
>  **Bold and prefixed lines** are text messages (example--KDKapow: is Kara's main handle)  
>   
>  **Bold and block-quoted lines** are recorded messages, radio communications, songs or poems, etc.  
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Bold text between horizontal lines indicates notes, emails or or writing.**
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> **REFERENCE GUIDE:**  
>  Please see "For Your Eyes Only" in CODEX for DEO personnel, roles and codenames.  
> Please see "Coursework for a Minor In Alien Studies" in CODEX for information on alien races in the multiverse.  
> Please see "Kryptowiki: Cast and Crew" for a list of all characters. (upcoming)  
> Please see "Kryptowiki: Mechanical" for a breakdown of major Krytponian and interstellar-era technologies. (upcoming)  
>   
> 

**July 5, 2006  | Lena Luthor** **  
****  
** National City, California  
Lex’s Bachelor Pad (now FBI-vetted Safehouse)  
**  
** **  
****  
** A newspaper with the words 'Lex Luthor on trial!' sits atop the piano.    
  
The last words of a Gaelic prayer drop from Lena’s lips.    
  
“Come back, Lex.  The world needs you.  I need you.”  
  
A week ago, she would not have dreamed of betraying Lex.  Not even a shot across the bow. Three counts of medical research violations and one of embezzlement.  He can beat those in his sleep.  
  
Then Lena saw her -- an alien, unreal, terrifying, physically flawless -- holding her opponent’s severed arm and hovering over a frightened crowd.  Then yielding...not demanding love or fealty or worship, as Lex seems to fear. Diving to the nearest wounded man, freeing him and helping him to his feet. Doing a trick in mid air to make a little boy laugh.  Trash talking the chauvinist pig she was fighting. Stopping cold when the brute taunted her...with family pain. Lena could tell that fear for a loved one stopped the woman’s assault.  
  
No camera captured a face.  She was far too fast. The armor was no metal bikini but it was fitted and not so blocky that Lena can’t dream about what sort of physique would need that to wrap around it.  
  
T _he problem with witness protection,_ Lena supposes. _Is the lack of casual sex with juicy blondes with Yorkshire accents._  
  
Lena strokes the ivory of the keys.  Some majestic beast died just so her fingers could touch something smooth.  The least she can do is honor the memory of that bull elephant.  
  
She hopes she remembers the late-night piano lessons Mercy gave her.  A wicked, forbidden gift given when Lena could not sleep.  
  
It is dark, still.  Before dawn. An hour made for regret and melancholy.  So she flips through the ancient, waterlogged and worn songbook she bought in a bookstore near MIT.    _One Hundred Songs of Sadness and Glory from Ireland._ _  
_  
Lena sings.

 

 

 

 

**There were two sisters of county Clare** **  
** **  
** **Oh, the wind and rain** **  
** **  
** **One was dark and the other was fair** **  
** **  
** **Oh, the dreadful wind and rain** **  
** **  
** **And they both had a love of the miller's son** **  
** **  
** **Oh, the wind and rain** **  
** **  
** **But he was fond of the fairer one** **  
** **  
** **Oh, the dreadful wind and rain** **  
** **  
** **So she pushed her into the river to dro-**

 

Lena’s hands seize up and her throat closes.  She cannot speak another word. She has no idea how long she sobs for, only that it is mid-morning now and that the pages of the song book are now crusty with  dried tears.  
  
“Do not make me do this, Lex.  Don’t make me hurt you just to save the world.  Please.”  
  
There’s a knock on the inside of the doorway.  
  
“You all right, mouse?” Mercy asks.  
  
Lena shakes her head.  
  
“All right, then.”  
  
Mercy’s hand slides into her coat and curls around her most prized possession, that Israeli-made monster of a pistol.  She doesn’t draw it. She’s just waiting in case of trouble.  
  
“Irish people don’t feel better after singing, you moron.  It’s genetic. Close the book of sad songs and step away from the piano.”  
  
Lena’s lips twitch upward, just for a moment.  
  
“You’re probably right.”  
  
“I’m always right.  It’s why you’re still alive.”  
  
Lena gets to her feet, smoothing her skirt.  
  
“Why are you dressed for the boardroom?” Mercy groans.  “You could be in sweatpants or in your underwear in bed.  House arrest, remember?”  
  
“Conference call,” Lena sighs.  “Lex is compromised and Lillian’s in the wind.  It’s my chance.”  
  
Mercy stalks towards Lena, dark eyes flashing.  
  
“Your brother rescued that company.  He bui-”  
  
Lena holds up one finger and the Luthor’s best hired killer stops in her tracks.  
  
“I’m guessing he also sent you here to serve as my bodyguard, yes?  Unless you fought your way out of the infirmary?”  
  
Mercy nods.  
  
“Which means you are serving me, not Lex.  Now I hope--I pray--he will see the horror in mother’s dreams of ethnic cleansing and give up his hate for Superman but if he cannot, someone will drag the Luthor name...my name...out of the filth.  That someone will be me.”  
  
“Kneel, Mercy.”  
  
“Beg pardon?”  
  
Lena sneers.  
  
“My old friend, you are the most heartless, cold, amoral human being I have ever met.  I know you well enough to know that your moral compass is little more than a wind vane.  You mold your conscience to the services you perform.”  
  
“One time I thought that if Lex wanted me dead, he would have you seduce me and then poison me.  Kill me despite the fact you have known since I was four. I suspected you would feel no regret, except perhaps for the lack of a round two.  Would I be wrong?”  
  
Mercy doesn’t reply.  She doesn’t even look hurt.  
  
“You have always expertly, meticulously implemented the orders of your employer and been willing to do any task that we needed.  Now you are in my employ. So my morality, my worldview, my winds of change, are yours. Turn into the wind, stop fighting, and follow me.”  
  
“And the bit about being on my knees?  Not really my type, mouse. Too young. Too...soft.”  
  
Lena snorts.  
  
“Missing your favorite parts, I know.”  
  
“You are on your knees because you are a servant.  A knight if you will. Swear to me that you will put my safety, my priorities, above Lillian and Lex.  That you will do the things I need you to without needless cruelty. That you will keep me safe in the most legal, gentle, non-confrontational manner you can.”  
  
“Swear to be my soldier.  I suspect you’ll find my orders less...messy...than Lex’s.  Just in case you have need of your soul later in life.”  
  
Mercy smiles and hands over her pistol.  
  
“Safety’s on,” she assures Lena.  
  
Lena taps the holster to one shoulder and then the other.  
  
“Rise.”  
  
They look into each other’s eyes for a long, solemn moment.  Then break into laughter. Lena points at Mercy, tries to say some taunt out loud and dissolves into laughter.  
  
“Where’s Otis?” Lena finally asks.  
  
That untrained pitbull has been equal parts lifesaver and troublemaker since Lena can remember.  The fact that he’s alive despite taking exactly nothing seriously is testament to his size, his talents and his protective twin sister.  Those extra eleven minutes gave Mercy a substantial gap in big-sister wisdom.  
  
“Punching bag in the sparring room.  Keeps him out of trouble,” Mercy explains.  
  
Lena rolls her eyes.  
  
“Let me know if I need to buy another one.  I hear sometimes puppies chew things up when they’re cooped up inside.”  
  
“Speaking of cooped up,” Mercy teases, pulling out a cell phone.  “The bureau says you’re allowed to go outside and have a cell phone.  Someone is going to put on something less...schoolteacher-y...and finish this profile.”  
  
She puts the phone in Lena’s hand.  
  
“Raya?”  
  
“Mmm.  App for rich people to date.  I’ve already set it for women only and put in some best guesses.  Just put on something cuter, show off that cheesecake, give yourself a bio and let’s get going.”  
  
Lena was wrong.  
  
_Mercy is a traitor after all._

 

* * *

  
  
**July 5, 2006  | Kara Danvers**  
  
National City, California  
  
Loft Apartment, Converted Warehouse  
  
  
  
Kara throws her hair back and beams at Logan, lips puffy and pupils blown out wide.  
  
“Mmm, darlin’.  God didn’t know there were angels like you or he wouldn't have made it sin.”  
  
_The drawl really must work when he and Jacob are doing assless chaps.  Bit of authenticity._  
  
He pulls his fingers out of her and drags them up, leaving a shiny trail up her belly.  Kara snatches his fingers and sucks the juices off them before tossing his hand back into his own lap.  
  
Logan’s partner Jacob is watching over he edge of his newspaper.  
  
“Get it out of your system, sweetie?”  
  
Logan throws his head back and groans.  
  
“Does she look like someone you only want to see once?”  
  
“We have our rules, my love.”  
  
“Yes,” Logan sighs.  “We do.”  
  
“They are that I let you have some...fun...once a month and no repeat playmates.”  
  
Kara rolls her head lazily to look at Logan.  
  
“As one-offs go, that was good.  I was trembling like a damn teenager.  Been so long since I did something with only my hands.  Something that simple. We forget how scary that first time is...good scary...as we get older.”  
  
She grabs the washcloth from the bedside and wipes her hands clean.  
  
Logan grins.  
  
“If you don’t mind my asking, why di-”  
  
“Why didn’t I want anything inside anywhere?” Kara jokes.  
  
He nods.  
  
“Want a gumball?” she asks, pulling one out of her clutch.  
  
“I'm good.  Also I'm not following, Kara.”  
  
She slides the gumball into her slit without resistance.  For someone so close to gay, Logan’s large, work-roughened fingers did amazing things to her.  
  
Kara leans over to give him the good-bye kiss, clenching hard as she does.  She pulls back and places the smashed gumball-- juices and all--in his hands. It’s half the size it was before.  
  
“That’s why.  I never do that sort of with one night stands because I don’t have the trust built up to really relax and I don’t want to hurt anybody...”  
  
A dumbfounded Logan stares at the gumball and then back at Kara.  Jacob looks at Kara and at his boyfriend.  
  
“I somehow became gayer and my balls retracted at the same time,” he mutters.  “Thanks for not breaking his dick.”  
  
“Welcome.  You two,” Kara says, waving her finger between Jacob and Logan.  “Have something amazing. When they get this whole gay marriage thing going, there will be hell to pay if I found out someone beat you to the courthouse.”  
  
Logan’s eyes go wide, hopeful, pleading.  Jacob ducks his head and rubs his salt and pepper beard nervously.  
  
She pulls the door shut, closing off the image of Jacob climbing onto Logan’s lap.

  
  
The drizzle outside feels like a bad omen after a hundred days without so much as a cloud.  For a solar-powered creature like herself, Southern California is a workout, steroids and an euphoric all at once.  
  
She looks at her phone and sees a message from Cat Grant.  She decides to cut through the riverside hiking trail for a little privacy. 

 

 

 

 

 

Queen of All Media  
  
Classes today?  
  
Yes, Miss Grant.  
  
To be expected...I want you to phone in when you have a gap.  
  
I have some arrangements for the Tribune reorg I need you to make.  
  
You need to meet your editor but that could be on campus.

  
Kara promptly walks into a tree.

 

 

 

 

Queen of All Media  
  
Korrine?  
Korrine???  
Korrine!  
Kara?  
My editor?  
  
Yes, Kara.  
  
I don’t hire assistants for things that voicemail, caterers or professional event planners could handle for me.  
  
Make no mistake, I will demand great things.  
  
I will make you put out trash fires, enforce my policies, and save businesses.  
  
Because I hire assistants for things that matter.  
  
And I shudder to think what a party you planned would look like.  
  
Cowboy hats and denim tuxes on the servers, I’m sure.  
  
I have a three-hour break in the afternoon, Miss Grant.  
  
That will have to do.  
  
Meet Snapper at the Starbucks on 34th and Columbia, right outside campus.  And Kara?  
  
Yes, Miss Grant?  
  
Snapper is intense...and extremely blunt.  
  
But he is the third-best investigative journalist on the planet after myself and Lois Lane.  
  
Thank you for this chance.  
  
See if you’re still thanking me after you meet him!  
  
I sent you two links.  
  
I expect you to open and use both by the end of the day.

Kara pumps her fist and cheers so loudly that a flock of pigeons take wing.  Cat may have flubbed the name but that job role sounds like actual fun.

Kara is a half-mile down the trail and still floating on air when her phone rings again.  The contact is 'ABLE Company" after Alex’s suggestion.

Nadia, Mason, Jack and Fatima appear on screen.  Alex’s icon is in the lower-left, camera and microphone icons crossed out.  There was much argument but finally the rest of them agreed that having someone listen in who could keep them from running headfirst into the US Military would be useful.  
  
“Hi, everybody.”  
  
“Hi there, tall dark and jacked,” Nadia teases.  “You either just had the mother of all orgasms--in a public park--or got good news.”  
  
“Good work news, yeah.  Miss Grant is going to let me write online stories for something called…”  
  
She checks the link on her phone.  
  
“Savage.com?”  
  
Mason coughs on their _chai_ and Jenna’s slender hand enters the frame to rub their back.  
  
“Savage.com?  So just the most vicious site on the web?  They’re small but they are mean. That’s the one that busted three of the last four gay megachurch pastors, Kara.  After they got the head of Blackwater called in to Congress.”  
  
“Oh.  Wow. This should be interesting,” Kara mumbles.  
  
“Truth,” Jack agrees.  When not turtled in a blanket, he wears a floppy hat and in this case, he seems to have lined it with tinfoil.  A poster on the wall behind him has a newspaper photo of JFK’s assassination and reads ‘there was a second shooter’ while his coffee cup says ‘keep watching the skies!’ with a flying saucer.  
  
He’s owned that mug since before he met Kara.  
  
Fatima smiles at Kara.  
  
“Thank you for sending those poets to me last week.  High Durlan is so musical in those old chants. Anyone who likes harp music will want to read my article about their religion.”  
  
“Three hits on the dark web, Kara.  Four on the boring web. No sign that anyone broke your cover although we’re seeing neo-Nazi websites start linking to you.  Probably just garden variety awful but...keep sharp.”  
  
Mason shudders.  Alex turns her camera on but not her mic  She panned it down so Kara can see her cleaning her railgun and caressing one of its steel slugs.  Alex whips out a sharpie and writes 'addressed to skinhead' on the shell and puts an arrow on it showing which end goes forward.  
  
Kara rolls her eyes.  
  
Fatima puts her head in her hands.  
  
“Didn’t you fight a war about that?” she groans.  “And your nation fought against the Nazis? And the Nazis lost?”  
  
“Far as Wikipedia knows,” Jack mutters. “They’re like cockroaches.”  
  
“Hey!” Mason shouts.  “Cockroaches are hard to kill but they’re not evil!”  
  
“Of course,” Fatima smirks.  “My apologies.”  
  
“Jack.  Anything I need to know about the dark web hits?”  
  
He drums his pen on his keyboard for a moment.  
  
“Pretty sure the first three are utter crap.  There’s one that discusses a wreck somewhere off South America.  Big one. If your cheat sheet is accurate, it’s probably an ultra-heavy freighter.  Three kilometers long, three-quarters of a kilometer wide. Big brick with a tapered front judging by sonar.”  
  
“Helgrammite,” Kara sighs.  “They actually live in hives when they’re in their own enclaves and like to keep the floor-plans of their buildings and ships square or hexagonal.  Sort of their comfort zone. So the ships end up that shape because it is most efficient.”  
  
“Location?”  
  
“Sent.”  
  
Kara hums while she thinks.  
  
“That’s shallow water.  Any ship that big is going to be more or less intact, ocean floor or not.  Keep me posted. I need to do some prep but maybe we can beat the salvagers to it.  Move her here.”  
  
“Mason?”  
  
“Dress up is going great.  Jenna and I have had to custom sew some things but that’s actually a really sweet rainy day thing to do with my gal.  I sent a list of materials we might need.”  
  
Kara scrolls through it.  
  
“What’s this one that says ‘cannot fucking burn it’ supposed to mean?”  
  
Mason’s cheeks darken.  
  
“Uh, there were two aliens...solars they called themselves who were I think made of fire.  Shy. Haven’t gotten names. They looked like stars with feet. Flames sort of twisting and jutting out from their bodies.  Male and female...but I get the feeling they shape change. I put some of that flame-retardant mesh on them and the female panicked when a bird hit the window.  The mesh boiled. Not melted. Boiled.”  
  
“Solars?  Huh. Never heard of them.”  
  
“They said something about...Triangulum?  Was that it, hon?” Mason asks Jenna.  
  
Kara drops her phone.  The barrier field and the micro-thrusters that fly it back to her hand were a great idea, she has learned.  
  
“Sorry.  Triangulum as in galaxy ?  That’s huge. We should be really nice to them.  Any civilization that starts sending people across dark space is no lightweight.  We have like a hundred known cases of Thessalians going across to Andromeda and it’s closer.  Way closer. So this big deal, discovering the New World type stuff. Let's not be the Natives at Plymouth Rock.”  
  
Mason laughs.  
  
“Well, since I can’t make them not naked and they can’t leave the house, pretty easy to be nice.”  
  
Jenna leans into the frame.  
  
“Kara, sweetie?  If you know of any other species that sees sex as something you do as a thank you for letting them crash or making them dinner...warn me?”  
  
“I’ll...yes.  Fair point, Jenna.  I don’t know of any but I’ll check the archives.”  
  
“Anything else?”  
  
Alex sends her a private message via Echo.  
  
[We recovered about six dozen aliens from the crashes in Texas, Wyoming and the one in Scotland.  Royal Air Force wasn’t thrilled but we did it. They have nothing and some of them are on the run from slavers or bounty hunters.  I’m lobbying to get permission to bring them to Sanctuary.]  
  
[Anytime, Alex.  Heads-up me if you get it.  I can do a fly-with once you take off.]  
  
[Will do.]  
  
“Nah, we’re good,” Nadia sighs.  
  
“You all right, Nads?”  
  
“I...I think so?”  
  
Mason rolls their eyes.  
  
“What she means is that the woman putting her up is the gayest southern belle there ever was and I guaran-fucking-tee that her guy friend is a beard.  Nadia, you know damn well that Annabelle just wants that Original Flavor Pussy...”  
  
Nadia chokes on air.  
  
“I was worried you were going to make a color joke.  I guess...I guess that’s better.”  
  
Mason bows.  
  
“I am but a vessel through which the gayness of the universe speaks.  Bye, bitches!” Mason calls out.  
  
“I need to hear about that date, Jack!” Kara reminds him.  
  
“Will do.  Peace out.”  
  
“Be well, Kara.”  
  
“Goodbye for now, Nadia.”  
  
Fatima dips her head to Kara and signs off.  
  
  
  
  
  
Kara pulls up the second link Cat sent her and it’s a dating app.  Something meant for the CEO crowd, not college students. The bio reads ‘no employee of mine will defile herself with Tinder’ and Cat is listed at her sponsor.  Cat has already had someone harvest Kara’s Instagram feed for the gallery. She also filled her place of work and a surprisingly important-sounding job title. Kara hadn’t ever bothered to look it up.  
  
“Could be fun,” Kara decides.  She sets the gender preferences, taps in some of her hobbies and posts a picture of herself posing suggestively with the remaining dragon eggs.  The income slider seems a bit crass but after checking with Kolex, she sets it based on his investment wizardry.  
  
By the time she makes it to her nine-thirty class, she has three notifications.

* * *

  
  
**July 7, 2006  | Cat Grant** **  
**  
National City, California  
  
CatCo Plaza, CatCo Tower  
  
  
  
"Get out of my sight Morgan," Cat snarls.  "Before security removes you and blacklists you."  
  
Morgan Edge flashes that slick, palm-greasing grin of his and Cat lifts her phone.  
  
"Ten seconds."  
  
"You'll reconsider," Morgan brags.  "Sooner or later. Seems like mothers never stay full-time long."  
  
Cat punches the button.  
  
"Security, please escort Morgan Edge from my office.  If he ever sets foot on one of my properties again, report him for trespassing.  Have IT block any email coming from him, his lawyers or subsidiaries. Repeat that back to me."  
  
"Exactly. Do it now.  Thank you."  
  
Cat slings the phone around by its cord and clicks it back into place.  
  
"Did I make myself clear that time?" she growls.  "Or do I need to hit you in the balls with my Pulitzer?"  
  
She reaches for the solid-brass statue on the shelf behind her desk.  Morgan goes a bit green, now that she's threatened something he cares about.    
  
He strolls off, though he makes a point of stopping at her assistant's desk.  Ed immediately slaps the photo of his wife and kids face down, as if to protect innocents from Edge.  He pushes the button on his desk and Cat's office doors lock with a pleasant thump.  
  
"Almost makes up for the street urchin haircut," Cat grumbles.  "I'll fix you later, Ed."  
  
As Morgan Edge drifts desk to desk, no doubt introducing himself as 'your new boss', Cat feels the rage slowly drip away from her brain.  
  
Ed turns on their private intercom.    
  
"Anything I can get you, boss?"  
  
His baritone is less grating for some reason.  
  
"Unless it's my son, someone with scotch or a triple cheeseburger, they don't get in here.  Clear?"  
  
"Done and done."  
  
Cat turns off her end and blows out a long, exhausted breath.  Morgan Edge wouldn't have been so bold except for the fact that all but two of her print publications are bleeding money.  Cat is not about to let ink on the page go the way of the dinosaur but it seems people only want to read celebrity trash, fashion and sex tips.  
  
Kara texts her.  Which is not acceptable.  Kara has been given tasks and has no reason to consult her.

 

 

 

 

 

Korrine  
  
I picked up Carter. Hope that's OK?  
  
Whether or not you're fired depends on the following: what time is it?  
  
Two-thirty.  
  
Then you're fired.  
  
Mom, be nice to Kara! She's funny and we took a nice walk.  
  
He grabbed my phone. I knew Carter was smart but he is faster than I expected.

  
  
As if her little boy actually moved quicker than the Woman of Steel.  Praise of her son is Cat's last remaining weak point and Kara knows it.

 

 

 

 

Korrine  
  
Why did you pick him up more than an hour early?  
  
NC Public Schools website said the magnet programs only do half-days in the quarter term.  
  
Death sentence rescinded.  
  
Truly her majesty's mercy knows no bounds!  
  
Little scamp did it again! #FutureNinja

**  
**  
Cat pushes the button for her blinds so she can cry silently.  Her son--her sweet, shy, timid boy--was waiting after school because she was too busy comparing dicks with Morgan Edge.  Kara rescued him--which will make it hard to be tough on her--though how she got the school to agree is a scary question.  
  
After composing herself she opens the blinds again to see Carter waving at her, Kara settling in to the desk across from Ed's and Edge standing at her office door with his checkbook in hand.  
  
Cat grabs her phone and calls Kara.  
  
"Kara, get that slimeball out of my sight and out of my building.  Drop him off the balcony, kill him with the glowy-eye-thingy...don't care."  
  
"On it."  
  
Kara rolls up her shirtsleeves--she's dressed like a professional, albeit a _male professional_ and wearing it the gayest possible way--and wraps one big hand around the back of Edge's neck.  Lifting him off the ground by the scruff of the neck, she proceeds to walk off with the city's wealthiest man kicking and squirming like a poorly behaved puppy. She disappears around the all-glass walls of the bullpen and doesn’t come right back, suggesting she’s actually going to carry him down to street level.  
  
Carter seems to have pulled a loose chair over sit with near Kara’s desk and is covering his mouth and laughing.  Cat gets up and goes to him. She kneels down beside him and taps his shoulder.  
  
He doesn’t like to be touched suddenly and Cat will be damned if she is not going to use that to teach her little boy about consent.  
  
“Hug?” she asks.  
  
“Sure, mom.”  
  
With her arms around him and her eyes shut tight, there are a few heartbeats where Cat is  simply happy. Her mother’s voice falls silent in memory. Three ex-husbands vanish like smoke. The nightmares that have dogged her since college are nothing but dreams.  
  
Because here is her child and Carter is good and smart and Cat would give everything to create a better path in life than she had.  
  
“Thank you for being safe,” she whispers.  
  
“Welcome.  I was with Ms. Zor-El so it’s fine.  She kept me safe.”  
  
Cat laughs softly.  
  
“You know that’s a secret, right Carter?  Like how Joan and Tim from down the stre-”  
  
“I know, Mom.  It would hurt people if I told.  Besides, I just guessed it.”  
_  
__Well, that's one use of adulterous neighbors...guess that talk sunk in._  
  
“So smart,” Cat grumps.  “You’re going to be tricky in a couple years.”  
  
For now, let him be almost twelve.  Let me have another fourteen months before he’s a teenager.  
  
“She’s really pretty,” he observes.  
  
Cat opens one eye and looks at Carter’s face.  No flicker of pubescent need, not a single particle of the lustful ooze that is Morgan Edge.  Still her sweet little man and hopefully she can steer Carter to safer waters before he becomes anything like that troll.  
  
“Observation,” he explains.  “Other people kept coming up to her.”  
  
“So smart,” she grumps.  
  
Cat finally lets go and sees Kara standing by her desk, spanking her hands.  
  
“That man,” Kara sighs.  “Is not my favorite person.”  
  
Cat mouths ‘thank you’ back to her.  
  
“Hand sanitize me, Ed.”  
  
Ed tosses the bottle underhand and Kara snatches it.  
  
“You should have Kara write for the science magazine, mom!”  
  
Cat’s eyebrow goes up.  
  
“Oh?  Why’s that honey?”  
  
Kara suddenly finds the ceiling incredibly interesting and Cat sees her counting tiles.  
  
“Because when I wasn’t talking, she talked about Casimir effect and Hawking radiation and all this Einstein stuff and…” Carter stops, trying to remember something.    
  
“Superconductors, nano-materials and electro-reactive crystals,” Kara fills in.  
  
“Uh-huh,” Cat mutters.  “I know some of those were real words."  
  
“It's neat," Carter mumbles.  "She knew about the stuff my science teacher says is too advanced and Kara thought it was okay to tell me.”  
  
“Is this true, Kara?”  
  
“I’m a journalism major,” Kara stiffly replies.  
  
“Not the question, young lady.  If I were to hand you a science article for CatCo Tomorrow, could you check the sources and proof it?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Any article?” Cat demands.  "Any topic?"  
  
Kara swallows.  Her face pleads with Cat not to ask it though they both know the answer.  
  
“Snapper would probably be happy to get rid of me,” she jokes.  “I think he was mad at me for not being scared of him when he got mad at me.”  
  
Cat clicks her tongue.  
  
“No.  Stay with Savage.  I’ll talk about putting some wires between it and Tomorrow.  Maybe we need a climate change slash environmental threat column.”  
  
Something in Kara’s stance and face shift.  Cat could swear she saw a flash of red light in Kara's pupils.  
  
“It would be my pleasure,” Kara replies, her voice no doubt more of a growl than she meant.  
  
_The first glimpse of real journalistic traits I’ve seen from her...a taste for blood_.  
  
Kara seems ready to go and Cat momentarily wonders if she’s lit a fuse.  If Kara’s interview is correct--and she doubted none of it--Cat just asked the sole survivor of an environmental apocalypse to relieve it all.  
  
_That was a bad idea.  Edge got further under my skin than I thought._  
  
“Ed, make a note.  I want to review any hiring, firing or organization decisions I make on days when I meet with...undesirables...the next day.  Make sure I do things with a clear head.”  
  
“Carter, I can't remember.  Did I remember to call the service dog place?”  
  
He shakes his head.  
  
It is at that moment that two _fucking dragons_ appear over Kara’s desk in a flash of light, carrying a slowly cracking egg between them.  One is white and much smaller and one is golden, except for an iridescent crimson that flashes or fades depending on the angle of the light.  Each wears a sleek coat of small triangular scales and has a series of bony spines behind its head.  
  
“Vhoc!  Flamebird!  Shoo!” Kara groans, waving her hands at the beasts which rise playfully up and snap their teeth.  Flapping mightily they lower the egg to Kara's desk and let go.  
  
“Go back home,” she demands.  “Naughty dragons. Don’t bring eggs out when they haven’t hatched.”  
  
The entire bullpen is still and silent as a tomb.  
  
Ed is pouring his coffee onto his memo pad.  
  
Jack from art is staring, eyes like dinner plates.  
  
Maura from entertainment is snickering and has turned her tablet around to film this whole thing.  
  
Winn--the lawn gnome that IT assigned to secure her accounts--simply keeps typing like this is completely normal.  
  
_Figure out what his deal is.  He's too small and meek to be a superhero._  
  
“Fine,” Kara finally grumbles.  "No boiled eggs for you two tonight."  
  
“What are those?” Carter asks.  
  
“Dragons.  Little ones.  Like toy poodles.”  
  
“I can see that,” Carter deadpans.  
  
“Strange lizards from another planet?” Kara attempts.  
  
“Try again,” Cat teases.  
  
“Fine.  They’re called pygmy _galata_ and they were bred down from much larger riding animals.  Sometimes people played…” Kara pauses.  
  
“...soccer, I guess, with the big ones.  The sport was called Gala-Sheve which was basically like saying horseball.  Then people wanted them as pets so...”  
  
Cat stares at the beasts perched on Kara’s shoulders, one to each shoulder and their tails wound loosely around her neck.  
  
“How big do they get?”  
  
Kara blinks at Cat.  
  
“Never more than thirty pounds.  But...roughly five feet, two of it tail.  Wingspan of ten feet, but they prefer keeping them tucked back.  About two feet at the shoulder. So long and light and lots of tail.”  
  
“Diet?”  
  
“Meat.  There’s a supplement that they need.  Not locally sourced. Helps with their flying and their...ability.”  
  
“Ability?”  
  
“Err...they sort of warped here from my dorm room.  Because they are very naughty!” Kara teases, waving her finger at the smaller, silver one.  Vhoc, she called it? A narrow, snake like tongue darts out and tickles her finger.  
  
“Disposition?” Cat demands.  
  
Kara smiles.  
  
“So sweet.  So lazy,” she teases.  The golden one huffs and drapes her head off Kara’s shoulder.  "This trick is neat.”  
  
“Because teleporting dragons weren’t?” Carter exclaims.  
  
“They’re actually able to sense...” Kara pauses.  “Flamebird? Can you crawl down into mommy’s hand?”  
  
The gold-and-red one hisses--like a dislodged cat--but proceeds to unwind her tail and crawl down Kara’s arm.  
  
“Are you nervous, Carter?” Kara asks.  
  
“A little.”  
  
“It’s all right,” Kara assures him.  “They’re smart. They’re like the you of the pet world.  She knows to be nice. Just give her a little pet on the top of the head, all right?”  
  
He does and a pattern of white splotches ripples outward from where his thumb made contact.  Flamebird scurries back up Kara's arm.  
  
“They can read tension in the muscles and skin cues to tell how they’re people are feeling.  They can change colors like a chameleon. So that flicker was like a mood ring. I guess she thinks that nervous Carter should be a white inkblot test.”  
  
“Sixth sense for human feelings?  Are you lying to me?” Cat demands.  
  
This is far more than any service dog center could possibly offer.  
  
“I’m not.”  
  
“And that egg…”  
  
Kara grins.  
  
“Hours from hatching, tops.  They’re sort of like geese. In nearly all cases the first person that they see and especially the first person who feeds them is who they imprint on.”  
  
Cat nods.  
  
“Ed, have legal call me.  I need a school law consult.  Kara, I need that food supplement and I need to send you shopping...give me any other details you know about these beasts.  Carter, you know that talk we had about dogs? How important it was to treat them like living things?”  
  
He nods, sporting the biggest grin she’s seen in years.  The sort of grin she worried she wouldn’t see when the specialist first used the words autism spectrum.  
  
“Kara, how much?”  
  
Kara shakes her head.  
  
“These are gifts.  It’s important that money doesn’t change hands.  Tradition.”  
  
Kara rubs the back of her neck.  
  
“But...I might trade for some advice on making stuff up?  Clearly I can't count on the other parts of my life not to just show up.”  
  
Cat chuckles.  
  
“Carter, go into my office with the egg.  There's some beef jerky in my desk. Kara, follow me. We’ll see if I can’t save you from yourself.”  
  
Kara falls in behind her as they head towards the conference room.  As they walk, her dragons go back to acting like cuddly scarves.  
  
_At least gold and silver work well with dark-skinned women,_  Cat supposes.    
  
“At least aliens are a thing now,” Kara jokes.  "There are aliens and people know about it. So I can be an alien but just not an important alien."  
  
“Good spin is telling the important parts of the truth,” Cat agrees.

* * *

  
**July 7, 2006  | Lena Luthor**  
  
National City, California  
  
Whitecliff Hotel  
  
  
  
(6:05pm)  
  
  
  
Lena stalks out of the room she rented for the conference call and slips a handful of hundred-dollar bills into the bus boy’s pocket.  
  
“Tell the manager I’m sorry.  For the lamp…and the vase.”  
  
Otis is leaning against the doorframe in the hall with all the subtlety he possesses.  It essentially screams ‘important person inside’ but a man his size and wearing an obvious bulletproof vest standing at a doorway might mark her but certainly doesn’t invite trouble.  If it did, that’s what Mercy, her garrote and the shadow of the bathroom doorway was for.  
  
“Call not go well, boss?”  Otis asks.  
  
Lena schools her temper and sucks in a long breath that whistled through her teeth more than she hoped.  
  
“It went fine.”  
  
“If you say so.”  
  
Tactically speaking, it could hardly have gone better.    
  
She had just enough shares and Lex’s arrest shook the stock market just enough that all but two of Lillian’s old allies are off the board now.   All it took was a reminder that they couldn’t get rid of her. That and a threat that as Tech Officer and head of R&D, she could drop all their product lines and set LuthorCorp to researching alien sex toys, human repellent sprays and bullet proof vests with four arm holes.  
  
Lena showed them the corresponding proposals and said they had two hours to decide.    
  
Their horror was something she could practically smell over the phone line and she rid herself of Pericelli, Windsor, Clarkson, Kalisko and even Ingrid Chapel...who had better turn out to be the daughter of an escaped Nazi and an Argentine woman or else she owes Mercy five hundred.  She snapped up their shares at a depressed price. It only cost her a few hundred million and listening to a non-stop barrage of slurs in three languages.  
  
Perhaps it was best that both of her dates were disasters.  She walked into the room with a good froth of anger and it would have been hard to keep her courage up without it.  
  
“Mercy,” Lena says into empty air and her lapel mic.  “I’m going to the bar.”  
  
“Copy that.  I’ll swap with Otis.  I’m more subtle.”  
  
“I’m hurt, sis.”  
  
“Otis, I swear…  Remember spring vacation, 1992?  This time you will need two slings.”  
  
Otis huffs.  
  
One of these days, Lena is going to get a detailed list of all the incidents of hand-to-hand combat, improvised explosive pranks and other sibling rivalry that created the two-person army that is the Graves Twins.  Surely the movie rights are worth something.  
  
Mercy is nowhere to be seen by the time Lena makes it to the bar which is a comfort.  If Lena can’t see her, neither can her mother’s thugs or anyone else.  
  
There are no more than a dozen patrons, at least four of whom are pairings of businessmen hundreds of miles from their wives and women paid hundreds of dollars an hour.  A clean shaven blond man is tending bar.

 

 

  
At a dimly lit rear table, a coiffed, pampered, plucked and possibly plasticked woman in a power suit is trying and failing to dazzle her date, who finally straightens out her dress and sighs, looking around like she is about to leave.  
  
Lena’s eyes meet the strangers and the stranger smiles at her.  Lena’s heart stops.  
  
She counts seconds in the gap, trying to remember the warning signs of a heart attack.  No pain in her left arm. No dizziness. Yet. Her brain just doesn’t feel like breathing or having a heartbeat is a priority right now.  She snaps back with a gasp and the other woman walks away from the standard-issue business lesbian she was with.  
  
She puts a stack of cash down -- covering their bill most likely -- and leaves her date blinking, scowling and stabbing a text into her phone.  
  
Lena can feel every person here staring at her.  She knows that if she moves, they’ll laugh. If she looks up, they’ll laugh. If she runs, they’ll never stop laughing.  
  
“Boss.  Bar. Have a drink,” Mercy commands.  
  
Lena forces herself to the bar, overriding every instinct screaming to flee.  No one laughed after all.  
  
“Scotch.  Ardberg. Three fingers.  Neat.”  
  
“ID?” the bartender asks.  
  
“Really?” Lena hisses.    
  
He does have every right to ask.  It wasn’t that long ago that Lex took her on a twenty first birthday blowout in Monaco that involved copious alcohol, a friend’s borrowed yacht and Lex leading her belowdecks blindfolded and into a swarm of hands.  Hands which belonged to barely dressed French and Italian women with voices like silk and eyes like chocolate.

Women that Lex swore all just _happened_ to be gay when she limped up to the deck the next morning. Far as she ever found out, they were all simply looking for fun.    
  
Lex has tolerated her use of brothels but swears she could do better...that Lena could woo any woman alive.  
  
_That was just before I graduated MIT,_ she thinks.   _Three years ago._  
  
_I must look fifty by now.  I think I lost ten years per hour on that call._  
  
“Pretty young woman plus liquor equals ID.”  
  
She slides her ID across.  
  
“Thought so.  Darling...you are way too gorgeous not to get carded.  It’d be insulting. Lena Luthor, huh?”  
  
“Yes, what of it?”  
  
“Pretty name.  Irish?”  
  
Lena blinks stupidly at him.  Russian is a more common first guess.  
  
“Childhood friend named Lena.  About your age...maybe it was a popular baby name over there.  She’s also got the whole green-eyed fairy princess look going. Red hair in her case.”  
  
A smirk tugs at Lena’s mouth.  
  
“I’ll let you live then.”  
  
“Sounds good.  Jack.”  
  
“Lena, as we’ve discussed.”  
  
Jack flashes a grin that probably works wonders on depressed straight girls.  He puts the glass down with a neat click, twirls the scotch bottle like an old west gunslinger and slides the result to her.  
  
Fifty dollars of liquid fire slides down Lena’s throat.  Jack’s eyebrow--golden blond, like his hair--shoots up.  
  
“Oh my.  I think you drink for free tonight, Lena.  Just...drink something weaker. Got a favorite beer type?  Bottle? Tap?”  
  
“Stout.”  
  
“Guinness?”  
  
She snorts.  
  
“I am already making an ass of myself, might as well embarrass my ancestors.”  
  
She adds three bottles of Guinness to the three fingers of scotch in her belly and is just about to start a fourth when a hand takes the bottle from her.    
  
Lena swallows.  
  
The hand sliding the bottle away is dark as the beer itself.  Unpainted nails and a firm grip. Clearly a hitman and given the size, someone who could put Otis in the dirt in seconds.     
  
Fear seeping in quickly, Lena thinks of her taser in her purse.  Her purse which she left in the room like a fucking moron.  
  
Lena looks up.   At the speed she was drinking, the booze really hasn’t set in yet.  Meaning this _creature_ in front of her is not only female and unfairly gorgeous...she is real.  
  
The hand that stole her beer is now resting on the bar beside her own.   A shimmering green dress--closer to a drape than fitted fabric--hangs off her shoulders and exposes all of her arms.  Arms which look soft and inviting until a sudden noise startles her drinking buddy and she covers Lena’s hand with her own.  The musculature underneath reveals itself in an instant and vanishes almost as fast, giving her a glimpse of cords and grooves and hard slopes that Lena suspects she could break the beer bottle on.  
  
Lena has always preferred bedmates more muscular than herself. Her shame fades at the idea something so fit could want something so flabby , even for one night.  It papers over the shame about her stubbornly soft, fleshy, apparently un-slimmable body.  
  
_Probably should work on that fear in therapy,_ Lena decides.   _Sounds like the kind of thing that I should work on._  
  
The woman’s eyes--God in Heaven, they’re like gold coins--capture Lena’s own.     
  
She asks something but Lena can’t process the sounds yet.  She’s too busy wondering how hard and how long she would have to kiss those lips before they darkened another shade of purple.  What that tongue would feel like lashing against her own rather than shaping words.  
  
The woman says something again and laughs--without hesitation, without fear--when Lena doesn’t answer.  She is unreserved and she laughs and smiles and means it. She never learned to wear a mask. Whatever life she led up to now it must have been as far away from Lillian Luthor as it can get.  
  
“Bad night?”  
  
“Dating fails,” Lena sighs.  
  
“Me too.  Barkeep? I’m reimbursing the lady for this.”  
  
Jack nods and takes the bill.  
  
“You don’t have to,” Lena replies, starting to hear the mushy edges of her words.  
  
“I want to.”  
  
“Why?” Lena demands.  “Do you want something?  How much do you want? Who sent you?”  
  
The woman blinks and stares at Lena.  
  
“Uh...do I need to want something?  I just want to make sure the drop-dead gorgeous woman at the bar doesn’t drink herself into trouble.”  
  
“Gorgeous?” Lena snorts.  “Do you even know who I am?”  
  
Lena pushes with her own gaze but those golden eyes don’t flinch or narrow or retreat.  
  
“Does it matter?  You seem to need a friendly face right now.  Pretty sure who you are doesn’t change the fact that you’re human and all humans need love.  The gorgeous thing is non-negotiable. I know what I see.”  
  
_There it is.  She’s over here trying to rescue me from myself because...she’s attracted to me._  
  
“What if I said I was, under no conditions, going to sleep with you?”  
  
Those already kiss-bruised lips curl into a smile.  
  
“I would wonder what terrible things I did in a past life to lose that opportunity.  But I’d still be here,” she replies.  
  
She drains Lena’s beer in three pulls.  
  
“Making sure you’re all right.”  
  
_Fuck!  Lena, you useless piece of shit!  She’s nice. Genuinely. Because she’s not part of your fucked-up world.  She’s being nice to you because she likes you! Quit making a fool of yourself.  Try to become what she thinks you already are._ _  
_  
Somehow the voice in Lena’s head was simultaneously Lillian at her most cruel and Lex at his most coaxing, like the night he talked her out of the lab rather than let her work herself to death after a breakup.  
  
“Let’s try this again.  I’m Kara Zor-El.”  
  
“Zor-El?”  
  
“Mmm-hmm.  I’m an alien,” she hisses, bending close so only Lena can hear.  
  
The side effect of the privacy the whisper afforded was a gust of hot, moist air on Lena’s ear and neck and Lena’s nose brushing up against a loose curl of silvery hair  scented with tulip oil.  Lena hears herself mewling when they part and no matter how disappointed she is in her own behavior, she relished the tease.  
  
“I’m Lena Luthor.”  
  
“Wow.”  
  
“Yes, I’m sorry that I’m not who you th-”  
  
“Amazing!  The Lena Luthor?  The scary smart woman with nineteen patents before you could vote, a controlling share in a Fortune 100 company and...this will sound horny but the most unbelievable eyes.”  
  
“No, the Lena Luthor whose family hates aliens.”  
  
The lips curl into a frown this time--they look delectable and Lena is fairly sure has not eaten in weeks--but the frown fades quickly.  
  
“Pff.  Details.  I haven't met them but you seem like a nice person.”  
  
“Do you like dancing?”  
  
Lena shakes her head.  
  
“I know how...sort of had to to be the rich girl at parties...but I’ve never found anyone I like dancing with.”  
  
“Have you ever danced with me?”  
  
“Well, no, obviously.”  
  
“Some scientist you are,” Kara teases.  “That is what we call an untested hypothesis.”  
  
She offers her hand to Lena.  There’s no thought involved...only a chance to touch someone who genuinely doesn’t care that she’s a Luthor.  Who wants to touch her despite--perhaps because--of her name and its built-in pain. Because this one--Kara--is good and is offering comfort expecting nothing.    
  
Kara cannot possibly be something Lena deserves and yet Kara seems to be difficult to get rid of with self loathing, derision or prickliness.  Lena has no tools left.  
  
“There’s no dance floor,” Lena complains.  
  
“Best not break anything then.”  
  
“Can I come closer?” Lena pleads.  
  
“Of course.”  
  
She wants to press her head into the woman’s chest and forget.  Put her ear at the juncture of collarbone and ribs and close her eyes and just listen to a heartbeat.  
  
“Would you like me to just hold you and we can sort of sway?” Kara asks.  
  
“Yes, please.”  
  
Kara’s heartbeat is steady and fast, like the wheels of a freight train clacking over the gaps between the rails.  Her hand on Lena’s back is powerful and the one cradling her own hand is smooth as silk.  
  
“Would you like to talk about what happened?” Kara finally asks.  
  
“Not really.” Lena sniffles.  
  
“Can I keep holding you?  I want to.”  
  
“Don’t you have someone better to be with?” Lena croaks.  
  
“Seems unlikely.  You’re the most amazing woman I’ve met for at least…”  
  
Kara’s finger on her back taps, one, two, three times.  
  
“...four reasons.  Though I counted each eye separately.  You have the most amazing eyes. I almost missed it but once I look, I can't see anything else.  Green-blue, blue-green. Like clockwise and counterclockwise..." Kara breathes. "Are you sure you’re real?  I’m pretty sure that the most gorgeous green-eyed girl and the most gorgeous blue-eyed girl are traditionally two different girls.”  
  
“Don’t think it would hurt like this if I wasn’t real,” Lena admits.  
  
“Hope this is helping,” Kara replies.  
  
“Yes.  It really is.  It makes the pain...quieter.”  
  
"I know what that can be like," Kara admits.  "When your own brain hates you."  
  
Lena clings tighter to her and her tense grip on Kara’s dress shifts, causing her hand to slide into the oversized sleeve and brush straight across the muscles wrapping her ribs and the side of a breast.  
  
“Sorry,” Lena mumbles.  
  
“Please,” Kara laughs.  
  
For Lena that laugh is like the scotch going down her throat, rough and warm and bad for her keeping wits about her.    
  
“Don’t be. I told you I am attracted to you, didn’t I?”  
  
“You did,” Lena sighs, a smile forming on her own face.  
  
“Just...next time let's do it on purpose so I can enjoy it too.”  
  
“That’s fair,” Lena sighs.  
  
“So...what do you want?  It seems like you’re not paparazzi, or shaking me down for money or some killer my mother hired.”  
  
“People are trying to kill you?” Kara growls.  
  
“Family problem.  My mother is a sociopath who cuts up aliens and my brother…”  
  
Lena doesn’t know how to explain this.  
  
“Lex is the smartest man my cousin ever met...and was once both Clark and Superman’s best friend.  I can assure you the regret is mutual.”  
  
“You’re her?” Lena asks, feeling the alcohol more with each passing moment.  
  
“Her who?” Kara teases.  
  
“Superwoman.”  
  
“Hmm.  So hard to say.  If I were, surely I wouldn’t be flashing it around to someone named Luthor.  Would a Super be dancing with a Luthor?”  
  
“No,” Lena realizes.  “We’re too dangerous.”  
  
Kara hums.  
  
“Perhaps.  But. Kara Zor-El might want to dance with Lena Luthor all night.  And tomorrow night. And any night we can, for as long as we can.“  
  
“You really don’t see that as a problem?”  
  
“I do not.  I see a gorgeous woman who has been hurt by people who judge her without knowing her and who write awful things about her online.  A woman with eyes like the heart of a secret forest and skin like driven snow and li-”  
  
Lena lunges, throwing herself madly into the kiss.  She couldn’t let her finish that sentence. Kara groans, pulling Lena close with muscular arms and cupping the back of her head in both hands.  Lena digs all her fingers into a braid made of molten silver that feels like satin between her fingers. Her eyes--no doubt positively manic--stare into Kara’s and plead for this to be real.  
  
Kara gently pushes her away and Lena whines, jerking her head upwards to try and regain contact.  
  
“Lena.  Stop.”  
  
Lena whines pathetically, trying to yank Kara back using her hair.  
  
“I loved it.  But your lips were turning blue.”  
  
Lena is about to call bullshit when Kara holds up a compact mirror and shows Lena her reflection: mascara streaking her cheeks and her lipstick smeared from lips to chin too cheek.  In places, her lips were wiped clean and sure enough, they’re gradually pinking up from a dull bluish tint.  
  
“Did I…” Lena pauses.    
  
_Kiss you without consent?  Yes, Lena, you moron. You did._  
  
“Hurt you?” she asks instead.  
  
Kara laughs.  
  
“No, no, no.  I...I’ve never been kissed like that.  I’ve had some wild kisses in the past but that was...that was sacred , Lena.  I’m not kidding. You were giving everything in to that kiss because you wanted to.  Abandon. Ecstasy. Transcendence. A spiritual experience. For me at least."  
  
“You were kissing me like the single most important thing you ever would do with your life, was kiss me.”  
  
Lena looks up at Kara and lets herself feel...lets herself admit it.  
  
“In that moment, it was.  People don’t just sit next to me for no reason.  They want my money or a business contact or they want to torture me about my brother or my mother.  Once I convinced myself you really were being nice, I had to convince myself you were real. When it hit me, that you really wanted to dance...that you really wanted me, I sort of lost my mind.”  
  
“People aren’t much good, if they don’t accept a woman for who she is rather than whatever stuff she has.”  
  
“Stuff?”  
  
“Money.  Nice cars.  Patents.”  
  
“Did you mean it?  About tomorrow night and...maybe a relationship?”  
  
“Are you asking me to be your trophy wife?  Lie around on your couch with nothing but a robe on waiting for you to come home?”  
  
“No, of course not.”    
  
“Well that’s a shame.  I was hoping you were. Beats working all day and then...that's good eating.”  
  
Lena giggles...something she probably hasn’t done since she was thirteen.  
  
“God that’s a sexy laugh,” Kara husks.  
  
“Quit making me laugh,” Lena demands, slapping Kara.  “Ow!”  
  
“No way in Hell, gorgeous.  Clearly someone needs to be making you laugh.”  
  
There’s a commotion at the bar behind them.  
  
“Turn it up,” someone demands.  
  
Lena turns to look at the television and Kara does too, never releasing her hand.  
  
“This is CatoCo Worldwide.  We have received reports of what appears to be military aircraft attacking a civilian jetliner over Arizona.  The jetliner seems to be losing altitude and the two jets following it have repeatedly fired at the engines. The jetliner itself seems to be from Virgin Airways, a British carrier.”  
  
“Oh my god,” Lena murmurs.  “Those poor people.”  
  
“I have to go, Lena.  Can we please, please, please, see each other again?”  
  
“I want that too.”

She's not sure whether she meant ‘that’ as yes to a second date or Kara screaming her name or Kara holding her and stroking her hair as Lena gives her last breath in this life.  
  
“The dark-haired woman in the gray suit by the door can give you my contact info.”  
  
“Bodyguard?”  
  
“Yeah.  Mercy Graves.”  
  
“Good.  If people are going to be trying to kill you, I’d rather you have someone with a crazy big gun and really mean eyes on your side.”  
  
“Why do you have to go, though, Kara?”  
  
“Lena, love, look down.”  
  
Lena’s heels are a solid three inches off the hardwood.  She squeaks in surprise and clings tighter to Kara's neck and doing so accidentally reveals a perfectly circular tattoo glowing neon-sign blue.  The tattoo darkens and fades back into the skin, leaving the ‘S’ of Superman’s logo behind.  
  
_No,_ Lena reminds herself.   _The sigil of the House of El.  Kara Zor-El. Zor-El...Married name?  If so, this 'Zor' is not getting his or her wife back._  
  
“So you have to go be a hero.  Be safe, Kara. You promised a second date and I don’t deal well with failure.”  
  
“I will be there, _grá mo chroí_.”  
  
Love of my heart.  
  
Three words said without hesitation, pronounced with no accent or flaw and somehow outlining an entire life they could spend together.  Kara must actually speak Gaeilge because no aid, no phone app, no recording, could be that accurate...and she knows for a fact Kara was not raised in County Wicklow.  She ambushed Lena with it just to reassure her and fluff up Lena's confidence.  
  
The roiling, seething heat Lena has felt gathering since Kara made eye contact turns into something jagged and wild that cannot wait.  Waiting will hurt too much.  
  
“How fast can you fly?” Lena demands.  
  
“Fast.  Why?”  
  
“Because I need you before you go.  I’ll hurry. Put your hand over my mouth.”  
  
Clearly confused, Kara complies.  Lena hooks her leg over Kara’s hips, fidgeting until she can get around her skirt to press her lace-covered mound against silk and stone.  Panting into Kara’s hand, she rolls her hips back and forth, faster and faster, dragging that damn silk dress over her clit.  
  
“You’re amazing Lena.  Beautiful and brave. A bit crazy for doing this here.  But I love that too. Take what you want. Don't be shy."  
  
"Come for me,” Kara purrs.  
  
Kara pulls her close and does something fucking impossible with the muscles of her back that should violate the laws of physics. More importantly it clenches her abs and crushes their breasts together at the same time.  Lena is rubbing off on diamond-hard ridges of muscle wrapped in soaked silk and her breasts mash against Kara's smaller and firmer globes. If only she could get her hands in Kara's dress without giving away the game. Lena needs to know what those feel like in her hands.  
  
Lena is careening to the edge quicker than she imagined she could.   Everything she is wearing must be ruined. She can feel her sodden panties sticking to the inside of her skirt.  The stain on her skirt must be beyond scandalous. This is behavior a whore would find unseemly.  
  
Lena...does...not...fucking...care.    
  
Kara’s smile and her eyes taking in Lena’s face and her arms like steel girders keeping Lena aloft tell her that this is not wrong.  It’s right.  
  
“Come for me, Lena.”  
  
She does and Kara’s hand over her mouth is not enough to fully contain her scream.  Jack looks up, winks, and busies himself polishing glasses.  
  
“Can you stand?  I need to go.”  
  
“Mercy can help me if I fall.  Go. But come back to me,” Lena begs.  "Soon."  
  
“I certainly have something to look forward to, don’t I?” **  
****  
** **  
****  
** **  
****  
**

 

* * *

 

**July 7, 2006  | Alex Danvers**

Omaha, Nebraska

Offutt Air Force Base

 

(1615 hours / 4:15 pm)

 

The mechanic slides out from under the aircraft’s engine.  A woman of fifty who brandishes a wrench like she’s scolding a child, she stares Alex down and pats the just-pained hull fondly.

“I want this back, young lady.  Been working on her for twenty years now.  She’s got some history. Reagan flew her to the fall of the Berlin Wall, you know.”

“I’ll make sure.”

“I’m no fan of that neon light crap you installed on the top deck, either.”

Alex smiles.  If she didn’t deal with foul mouthed and grouchy enlisted personnel every day, she would lose her mind.

She sees movement in the corner of her eye and spins to greet to the general.

“General Gilbert, thank you for allowing us this aircraft.”

He looks at the long, white fuselage.

“You’re buying us a new one, so I can’t complain.  If this boss of yours wants to spend any more money, get her on the horn.  I have some ideas.”

Alex laughs.

“I’m sure you do and I imagine that you’ll be pleasantly surprised with what we’re cooking up.”

She goes to attention and salutes—Air Force even though he knows she’s Army—and he returns it and turns to his orderly.

“Clear the hanger.  No one not in black pajamas gets in or out.”

“Sir.”

Alex waits as the mechanics and flight crews leave.  She is alone with an EF-2 now, a piece of hardware she respects even though its ancient.  This aircraft was built to be the last bastion in a nuclear war. To keep the president alive no matter how bad it got.

That makes it a natural choice for a survivable ride that can be painted to look like an ordinary airliner.  

“Paperclip, how we looking?”

“That whizbang fabric Tinkerbell gave us is installed inside the cabin, cockpit and cargo area.  The countermeasures suite is booted up. Ready as she’s going to get until I can get her back to Anvil.”

Alex nods.

“I’ll be co-pilot.”

Paperclip scoffs.

“Ma’am, I qualified on the Blackhawks after ten hours with you.  This is a goddamned airliner. We can handle it.”

“Gentleman, Ice, this is White Knight, load the passengers.  Straightjacket, make sure you’re not seen.”

“Hoo-ahh, boss.  No one gets in those doors.”

Vasquez tosses a chemical flare from her perch at the balcony, then two more.  Each of the doors to the hanger is now well lit with a red glow. Anyone coming in will face a wall of nothing in their night-vision while Vasquez guns them down.

He and Demos start loading the refugees, six or seven at a time.  

Alex slings her railgun out of sight on her back.  She kneels down so she will be eye level with the little ones.

“ _Hajatn.” <Greetings.>  _She tells a small Coluan girl clinging to a Helgrammite’s ragged clothes.  Clearly an orphan, she’s never let go. Her caretaker reaches down and strokes her with green-shelled claws.

 _“Esholo, vis qak shyr.” <Peace, many-eyed-one.>  _Alex tells the mother.

She can’t smile...half of these folks will see that as a growl.  All eight of the Helgramittes compound eyes blink slowly and she clacks her claws together in a three-stage gesture.

[Echo?]

[Open palm gesture.  Sign of truce.]

A quartet of Thessian girls—aunt, niece and two pre-teens they took in—approach, looking apprehensively at an aircraft that looks so much like the one they fled in the Scottish hills.

 _“Hajatn-ata shul tas, uvu salim.”_ _< Greeting you honors me, water-sister.>_

All four give Alex a low, flourished dip of the arm.  

[That’s a new one.  Echo?]

[It means ‘sweet’ or ‘cherished'.]

[Kiss on the cheek, got it.]

So it goes, Alex greeting and accepting tiny gifts and offering appropriate food for most of an hour.  The last half-dozen are boarding now, a race Alex has never seen. They look like a star’s fire given shape and are wearing only jewelry.  It would be indecent except for the sheer brightness obscures their features.

Reynolds helping them wrestle some odd piece of machinery into the cargo bay.

“Solid diplomacy boss,” Vasquez radios.  “But the drone just went down and last I got was some fuckery on the perimeter.”

“Air Force?”

“Negative.  Black SUVs, ski masks and AK-47s.”

“Fuck,” Alex hisses.

“Paperclip, spin her up.  Gentleman, get everyone inside.  Ice! Anyone but me and Straightjacket come up this ramp, shoot to kill.”

“Straightjacket, do your thing.  Watch my six.”

The faint whine of a railgun coming to full charge comes from Vasquez’s sandbag and ceramic lined snipers nest.

[Echo...I need some help.  Keep your sensors up and set on maximum range and if you get any communications, archive, analyze and upload to your relay at Anvil.]

[Shall I begin hormone management?]

[Do it. Adrenaline and cortisol spike and back me off when we’re safe.]

The door behind the machine shop is the first to be breached.  Alex sends a railgun round through the opening before they can spread out.  Four men are torn in half and a shards of spine and ribs scatter around the resulting mess.

Alex flicks the lever with her right hand and the next shell slides in.  Arc pistol fire from Demos drops three more.

[Alex, I have intercepted a distress call.  They appear to be using 4096-bit ciphers last used by the CIA in 2003.]

[Meaning its an off-the-books thing.  Fuck!]

[Fuck is accurate.]

“Paperclip?  ETA to takeoff?”

“Two minutes.  Everybody inside!”

“Straightjacket, ditch the cover.  I’ve got you!”

Vasquez vaults over the railing, the pistons on her exoskeleton hissing as she leaps from this cover to that, kicking off each time and scattering crates and barrels behind her.  Alex keeps up her barrage in the doorway, holding back anyone smart enough to live and killing the handful stupid enough to try and enter.

Something explodes behind her and sends Alex flying.  Shards of hot metal pepper her right side.

“Alex!” Vasquez yells.

Her railgun barks three times.  Concrete shards kicked up from the rounds hitting tarmac spray the newly breached doorway.

Vasquez is on her in seconds, snagging the lift ring on her vest.  Alex turns—groggy—and fires her railgun wildly in the direction of the problem.

“Ice!”

Demos sprints to Vasquez and slings Alex over his shoulder.  Vasquez yanks the pin on Demos grenade belt and rips it off him, hurling it at the machine shop.  She takes her own and throws it at the other door. Reynolds helps Demos haul her inside.

“Bye-bye,” Vasquez sneers.  The belts go off and two bursts of fifty-thousand degree heat incinerate everything for thirty yards.

Reynolds drops Alex into a seat and kneels next to her, ripping open his medkit.

“Shrapnel,” Alex coughs.  “No internal organs hit.”

“How do you fucking know that?” Demos demands, white as a sheet.

“Reynolds, pull the hydraulics and the bodysuit and cut open my vest.”

[Echo, show yourself.]

“Greetings.  I am a class five artificial intelligence, sensor net and recon kit embedded in Operative Danver's body.  I monitor her vital signs and tissues I can assure you, none of her organs were compromised.”

“Fuck boss,” Vasquez laughs.  “You get all the toys.”

“Birthday present,” Alex coughs.

Good thing that everyone on DEO-1 knows who Kara is.

“My birthday’s coming up,” Demos mentions.

“We’ll see,” Alex coughs.

“Get me to the cockpit.”

[Echo, dose me.  Non-drowsy but get me vertical.]

[Neural pulse initiated.]

Reynolds drops Alex into the co-pilot's seat and straps her in best he can while avoiding the wounds.  The hanger doors are yawning open to reveal another pack of men with heavy machine guns.

Paperclip throws the throttles to the redline and drops the brakes.

Men and guns and body armor are reduced to spatter and sludge by the turbines blades.

“Hits?” Alex asks.

“Nothing to worry about.  That new paint is really something.”

“Get us in the air.  I’ll deal with the tower.”

“Copy that, White Knight.”

[Echo, patch me in.]

“Offutt Control, this is White Knight.  We are under attack.  Blue-on-blue. We have friendly wounded and enemy KIA at hanger India Niner.  We are under way and taxiing. I need a runway now.”

“Unknown aircraft, you are not cleared for takeoff.”

“Airman!  Shut up and get her what she needs,” snarls the general.

“Yes sir.  Unknown aircraft, you are cleared for runway twelve.  Base security are en route to I-9.”

“Negative,” Alex coughs.  “These guys are the real deal.  They’ll tear through your guys. Send special forces if you have them.  If you don’t, blow the damn thing up from a distance. We softened ‘em up with explosives so the hangar is wrecked anyway.”

“My men are good,” the general reminds Alex.

“And we’re the best and we’re using gear you don’t have and they nearly killed me.”

“Pull the guys back and have them set up a thousand yards back,” the general orders.  “Put a fast mover up and have it circle the base. Anything sticks its head out, level the area.”

“White Knight, the skies are yours.  Scramble four from Bulldog,” he barks at a subordinate.  “I want them flying that bird out.”

“Recommend against that, sir.  These men were using American encryption gear.  Can’t trust that they don’t have pilots on the payroll too.”

“Thank you for the warning, White Knight.  I will break some heads and clean house at our end.”

Paperclip grabs the overhead mic.

“Everybody hold on!  This is going to be steep.”

She yanks back the yoke and the 747 leaps into the air.

“Offutt control, this is Paperclip.  Echo Foxtrot Three Five is changing call-signs to Starlight One and we are going dark.”

“Solid copy, Starlight One.  Godspeed.”

Paperclip looks over to Alex.

“You look like Hell, White Knight.”

“I’ll manage.  Got something in me for the pain.  What can I do, Paperclip?”

“Just watch the engine panel and the radar.  There and there. And if you’re going to be bleeding all over my aircraft, call me Joan.”

“Ahh,” Alex muses.  “Hence the ‘Jett’ callsign.  I’m Alex. I must say, Joan…I loved your second album.”

“Lucky you’re wounded,” Joan mutters.  “I can’t kick your ass.”

 

(1755 hours / 5:55pm)

 

Alex manages to make her wound look pretty enough to show off and she goes back through the aircraft to check on their charges.  Sixty-two alien refugees she is responsible for and now some crooked part of a spy agency is taking shots at them.

Three high-school aged raxxie girls have set up in the presidential office and raided the liquor and cigar stash there.  One of them has grabbed a roll of toilet paper and is writing executive orders to her friends who stand with stacks of fresh sheets.

The Coluan girl has somehow interfaced with the TV and started showing a bootlegged copy of _Little Nemo_ that she had in her brain.  She crawls onto her Helgrammite friend’s lap and buries her tiny face in exoskeletal plates as slushy, half frozen tears fall from her face.

As she passes them, the Thessalian and her niece flag Alex down.  They pull aside their borrowed shirts to reveal tattoos in some high-tech paint.  The tats look like black clouds with slowly-changing crimson lightning inside them.

“Black Nebula.  Syndicate mercenaries.  Assault and boarding,” the aunt says, indicting her niece.  “Sniper and demolition,” she says, tapping her own chest.

“You need us, say the word and we’ll grab our kit.”

“Black being merciful,” Alex hopes.  “It won’t get that bad. You are with my people now and you shouldn’t have to fight.”

She makes the rounds twice more, making sure that everyone has blankets and food and pillows and that no one is so scared it’s life threatening.

[Echo, let Kara know.]

[She is currently in hard-privacy mode.  I will post the message but Kolex may not be able to share it.]

[Keep it on repeat, Echo.  And keep me posted. Also…thank you.]

[It was my pleasure.  You’re my best friend Alex.  Of course I saved your life. That fight made my circuits misfire like crazy...is that being scared?]

[I guess that's like being startled, yeah.  You good, buddy?]

[I can reboot, Alex.  Dreamless, restful sleep on command.  I'll be fine.]

[Lucky bitch.]

[I have my tricks!]

Alex goes back up to the cockpit and slides into the chair beside Joan.

“Where are we?”

“Just passing over Houston.  You sure you want this airstrip?” Joan asks.  “Safer at Anvil instead of the middle of nowhere.  Will Mexico even let us over the border?”

Alex chews the inside of her cheek.

“Swing wide.  Come at it from international waters.  The facility can cover us once we’re within eighty klicks.”

“What the blazes is this facility?” Joan demands.

_Fuck it.  She knows Kara exists.  I’ll just shove the NDA down her throat later._

“You ever hear of Superman?”

“Sure.”

“My sister is his nerdier, older, meaner cousin.  This is her vacation home.  Safest place to put these folks.”

Joan whistles.

“Roger that, landing on the flying saucer it is.”

 

(1815 hours / 6:15pm)

 

“The fuck is that?” Alex asks, pointing to the radar.

Four dots are closing in fast behind them.

“Interceptors,” Joan replies.  “And this thing is too fat to get away.”

Alex lifts her wounded arm and taps at the tablet strapped to her suit’s pistons.

“Scramblers up.  Flares will auto-deploy if they fire.  Can you take us low enough to lose them?”

Joan shakes her head.

“Any decent radar is look-down, shoot-down.  There’s no such thing as low enough.”

“Keep us high, then.  That gives us some time if they knock out an engine.”

“What?  Thought you coated this whole thing with your magic paint?” Joan demands.

“There wasn’t time to coat the _inside_ of the engines,” Alex coughs.

[Alex, if I may?  I have a suggestion.]

[Yes?]

[I have two monitoring drones at my disposal in one of Kara’s recommended landing zones.  I can have them tail us and broadcast this to news channels. We can also program the hull to appear to be civilian airline livery.  A government response to such an act of terrorism is likely.]

[Do it.  How about Virgin Airways?]

[International pressure.  Wise.]

Alex prays her sister is at home channel surfing.

 

* * *

 

**July 7, 2006  | Kara Danvers**

National City, California

Whitecliff Hotel

 

(6:05pm)

 

The last time Kara felt this lost was when her pod’s maneuvering thrusters frizzed out and she spent weeks staring at the inside of a nebula as it tumbled past.  She has forgotten how to talk to pretty girls or more specifically, she cannot find a way to start a conversation from absolutely nothing.

So she’s been eating and making eyes and wiping salad dressing off Mandy’s cheek.

“So you work in tech?” Kara asks.

_This is the woman this site said was 9/10 a good match?_

Mandy shakes her head.

“Finance.  Corporate restructuring and takeovers.”

_So, you’re a vulture picking over people’s failed companies for scraps._

“God, I could never date someone in tech,” Mandy jokes.  “All those undercuts and and hoodies? Blech. I need a little style, like you, not some butch with autism who lucked out with an app.”

_So basically you wouldn’t approve of my friends and I wouldn’t approve of your job.  Solid start, here._

[Kolex, please search tips for ending a bad date quickly.]

[Stand by.]

“Media, though.  I can respect that.  Online media, right? You must be doing good to make six figures right out of the gate.”

“Yeah.  Savage.com actually.  Headhunted.”

“Well, at least it’s liberal.”

Kara smiles.

_How can it be I spent my childhood with princes and princesses and mad scientists and governors and some of the the snottiest, most spoiled people on Krypton and this woman’s ego is too much?_

“Mandy, I don’t think this will work.”

The disappointment crosses Mandy’s face immediately.  Kara had felt Mandy’s foot running up and down Kara’s leg all night.  Attraction abounds...it seems they just would have to gag each other in and out of the bedroom just for civility.  Until Mandy started talking, Kara would have considered it.

“Why not?” Mandy demands.

“Because,” Kara sighs.  “I think maybe you hate everyone I know.  My only friends here in town are a gay startup founder and programmer and a gay IT guy.  One is on the spectrum but Greg would never, in a million years, have blundered into those insults you just did.  I write for a science blog. Nerdy as fuck. And this...”

She waves her hands at the sleeveless green dress that she borrowed from Vasquez’s sweetheart.  It oozes class, like everything Clarice has but it’s also slouchy enough that Kara doesn’t look like a bodybuilder in it.

“...is something I borrowed from a friend.  I’m usually blue jeans, denim jacket and a T-shirt.  Maybe a red or purple T-shirt if I’m feeling fancy. So I’m one of those butchy nerds you could never be with.”

Mandy opens her mouth to protest.

“Mandy, honey.  I’m black. I know what people say when they’re trying to back off things they ‘didn’t mean’ but actually meant.  I’ll save you the trouble. I’m sure all your best friends are butchy nerds.”

“I hope you find someone who is exactly who you need, though.  Everyone deserves that, Mandy.”

Kara reaches out to pat Mandy’s hand but she jerks it back.

_Not the sort to like being touched unless she gets something out of it._

[Kolex, calculate the bill.]

[One hundred eleven dollars and fifty three cents.]

Kara crooks her finger at one of the waitstaff and places six twenties on the table and two in the man’s pocket.  

A pair of noises has been bugging her all night.  

The whine of a radio with the volume turned all the way down and the squeak of tiny oiled springs.  The springs holding the bullets in a clip. A noise she learned to recognize as Black Knight.

Taken together in a pace like this, those usually mean a bodyguard for someone important.

Kara looks up, trying to figure out where it’s coming from.

_Why am I breathing?  Why is my heart going so fast?_

Kara tries to move her chest slowly rather than breathe whenever possible.  Somehow not taking in air reminds her of space and the inky calm.  Now she can’t stop breathing.  Years spent learning to control her body here on Earth blasted away.

Kara is nothing special now, just a woman gasping for air...at the sight of _her._

A woman with a tousled black mane and skin the color of cane sugar—no less tempting for the tongue—looked up from her misery drinking at the bar when Kara stood up.

Straight into Kara’s eyes.  

They hold the gaze for a long time before the stranger ducks away and hunches her shoulders in, trying to shrink out of sight.  She looks miserable and an empty tumbler and three Guinness bottles sit in front of her.

[She is on the app, Kara.]

[Really, Kolex?]

[You viewed her profile this morning.  Lena Luthor.]

[That Lena Luthor?]

[Yes, Lady Kara.  It appears that…] Kolex is searching for a phrase.

_It appears that Sara Lance’s tall tales did not do her justice._

[Kolex, go to hard privacy mode.  No one but me in my head. Not even you.]

[If you wish.]

Kara moves through the room, putting a gentle hand on a waitresses shoulder so that she doesn’t get in her way.

The bartender—Jack, was it?—is handing Lena another drink.  Kara crosses the remaining paces almost at a jog and takes the beer before Lena can.

_She’s gorgeous...and rich...and sad...and way out of my league.  But I have to have her. Don’t ramble don’t ramble don’t ramble…_

“Bad night?”

Lena looks up, dazed but not drunk.  She must have been knocking them back too fast to let them sink in.

“Dating fails,” Lena replies.

Sweet woodsmoke and chilly winds and a mournful fiddler’s reel slide into Kara’s ears.   _Her voice…I need to hear it again.  But happy._

“Me too.”

Kara takes this beer for the team.

Lena says something else but Kara is struggling to put meaning to it.  Lena’s trembling, ruby-red lips and her watery eyes mean far more than whatever words she is making in that sad, hopeless tone of voice.

A chair scrapes behind them and Kara tenses, covering Lena’s hand with her own.  It was instinct. Protect mate. Find shelter. Reach out for comfort.

Lena’s eyes trace her arm as Kara relaxes and a different instinct seems to be on Lena’s mind.  She demands to know what Kara wants, what kind of scam she is pulling.

When Kara tells her the truth, she resists and swears never to sleep with Kara.

_Ouch._

When she reminds Lena that even without that she would want to be here, close, being a comfort…Lena looks broken.  Like that is something she was never given before.

Those eyes are wet with tears now, tears Lena feels she needs to hide.  Kara takes one escaped tear with her thumb and presses it to her own lips.

Dance.  Kara needs to dance.  Needs to know how this ethereal creature feels in her arms.  She needs to stare into those eyes, green and blue and just slightly different from each other.  

 _Aren’t mismatched eyes supposed to be a sign of witchcraft?_ Kara wonders.   _Or was that a sign of faeries?  Does her hair smell like an enchanted forest?  It looks like one. Pale skin, red lips? Vampire?  I can deal with that._

“Do you like dancing?”  
  
Lena shakes her head.  
  
“I know how...sort of had to to be the rich girl at parties...but I’ve never found anyone I like dancing with.”  
  
“Have you ever danced with me?”  
  
“Well, no, obviously.”  
  
“Some scientist you are,” Kara teases.  “That is what we call an untested hypothesis.”

A wicked smirk — pride, maybe a challenge — crosses Lena’s face and Kara knows she struck a chord.

 _Science is the quickest way to this girl’s heart,_ Kara realizes.   _Try and remember that._

A few seconds in, it becomes clear that Lena only wants to be held.  She snuggles her head against Kara’s chest. Her ear is over Kara’s heart and her now-untied hair falls sloppily across them both.  Those distractingly sharp cheekbones brush the top of Kara’s breasts.

“Don’t you have someone better to be with?” Lena asks.

Knowing a self-loathing comment like that was coming didn’t make it hurt any less...someone has taken this brilliant, lovely woman and worn her down.  Kara does not know their name but for the first time, she swears to kill a human being in cold blood.

Kara and Lena spar with Kara talking about how much she wants to be here, Lena swearing she’s absolute trash unworthy of love.  It all seems to have to do with her last name, not Lena herself.

At some point Lena’s hand ends up under Kara’s dress and scrapes her breast.  What are words? Kara dimly remembers words. Right now she doesn’t remember what they were for.  It’s taking everything she has not to lay Lena out on the bar, rip her skirt open, claim her mouth with a kiss and _prove_ just how loveable Lena is.

Lena worries.  Kara laughs and it makes Lena laugh.

Words are not so important right now, only Lena's reactions matter.

When the topic of Lex comes up, Kara takes the leap.

“Lex is the smartest man my cousin ever met...and was once both Clark and Superman’s best friend.  I can assure you the regret is mutual.”  
  
“You’re her?” Lena asks, feeling the alcohol more with each passing moment.  
  
“Her who?” Kara teases.  
  
“Superwoman.”  
  
“Hmm.  So hard to say.  If I were, surely I wouldn’t be flashing it around to someone named Luthor.  Would a Super be dancing with a Luthor?”  
  
“No,” Lena realizes.  “We’re too dangerous.”  
  
Kara wants to laugh but Lena is far too fragile right now.  Lena is a fawn in the middle of the dark woods. Small and lovely and terrified.  Ready to bolt.  She’s the farthest thing from dangerous.

It looks like the alcohol is setting in Lena’s brain which means time is short for Kara to say all these mushy things she feels.  That she never wants to let Lena cry alone or be alone, that she she wants to wake up and stare into those eyes every morning, that she wants to rock their chocolate skinned, emerald eyed and silver haired babies to bed every night.   That she wants to retire with Lena and be a cat lady.

“Perhaps.  But maybe Kara Zor-El might want to dance with Lena Luthor all night.  And tomorrow night. And any night we can, for as long as we can.“

The rambling comes back with a vengeance when Kara talks about how beautiful she thinks Lena is.  Something in Lena snaps and she lunges, lips smashing in to Kara’s, her tongue rimming the inside of Kara’s lips until she yields for Lena's tongue and her hands buried in Kara’s hair.  Lena kisses recklessly, maniacally, uncaring about the lipstick she’s smearing on Kara’s face or the tears running down her face or the wheezing breaths she’s making.  

This is the last kiss before war, it is the first kiss of the blushing bride, the kiss of a lover returning from afar, the kiss of an angel and of a devil and one that casts a witches’ spell.  

It is all those special kisses that only happen once each.

 _Let this be forever.  Let the universe end right now,_ Kara wishes.

Finally she has to push Lena away before she drowns herself.  

Lena’s mouth tries to follow Kara’s as she pushes firmly to get a tiny bit distance between them.  Her chest is heaving and her lips are swollen. Those magical green eyes are almost black now, pupils blown and watery with tears.

_Happy tears for a change._

“Did I…” Lena asks, voice choked.  “...hurt you?”

Kara has to remember how to make words again fast or she’s not going to be able to reassure Lena before assumptions are made and feelings are hurt.

Her account of the kiss makes Lena not only smile but let herself _keep_ the smile, rather than burying it in some awful training she got in finishing school.

“No, no, no.  I...I’ve never been kissed like that.  I’ve had some wild kisses in the past but that was...that was sacred, Lena.  I’m not kidding. You were giving everything in to that kiss because you wanted to.  Abandon. Ecstasy. Transcendence. A spiritual experience. For me at least."  
**  
** “You were kissing me like the single most important thing you ever would do with your life was kiss me.”  
**  
** Lena looks up at Kara and this time, does not hesitate to feel.

“In that moment, it was.  People don’t just sit next to me for no reason.  They want my money or a business contact or they want to torture me about my brother or my mother.  Once I convinced myself you really were being nice, I had to convince myself you were real. When it hit me, that you really wanted to dance...that you really wanted me, I sort of lost my mind.”

_How many humans can I rip apart before it’s tacky?  Hopefully a larger number than the ones who have hurt her feelings._

“People aren’t much good, if they don’t accept a woman for who she is rather than whatever stuff she has.”  
  
“Stuff?”  
  
“Money.  Nice cars.  Patents.”  
  
“Did you mean it?  About dancing tomorrow night and...maybe a relationship?” Lena pleads.

Her voice is so small, so sad, so soft, that Kara wonders if someone without superhearing could even make it out.

“Are you asking me to be your trophy wife?  Lie around on your couch with nothing but a robe on waiting for you to come home?”  
  
“No, of course not.”    
  
_Crap._

“Well that’s a shame.  I was hoping you were. Beats working all day and then...that's good eating.”

Lena giggles—actually giggles—the way beautiful women _should_ when something makes them happy.  Perhaps, _Rao be merciful_ , some part of that fantasy appealed to Lena as much as it did to Kara.

“God that’s a sexy laugh.”

“Quit making me laugh,” Lena demands, slapping Kara.

She wiggles her fingers and makes a face.

“Ow.”

_That’ll teach her to try to make me stop being nice to her._

“No way in Hell, gorgeous.  Clearly someone needs to be making you laugh.”

There’s growing chatter at the bar behind them

“Turn it up,” someone demands.

Kara turns to look at the television and Lena stays with her, turning without breaking eye contact.

“This is CatoCo Worldwide.  We have received reports of what appears to be military aircraft attacking a civilian jetliner over Arizona.  The jetliner seems to be losing altitude and the two jets following it have repeatedly fired at the engines. The jetliner itself seems to be from Virgin Airways, a British carrier.”

“Oh my god,” Lena murmurs.  “Those poor people.”

_Vhoc’s rotting hole!  This better be important...if the Air Force clam-jammed me for nothing we’re going to go back to four branches of the military._

_At least Lena already knows I’m Superwoman._

“I have to go, Lena.  Can we please, please, please, see each other again?”

“I want that too,” Lena replies.  “The dark-haired woman in the gray suit by the door can give you my contact info.”

“Bodyguard?”

“Yeah.  Mercy.”

_Mercy Graves?  Lex’s right hand woman never leaves his detail...maybe Lex still does love his sister._

“Good.  If people are going to be trying to kill you, I’d rather you have someone with a crazy big gun and really mean eyes on your side.”

[Kolex, your access is restored.]

[Prepare a phalanx of tier-one assault chassis with full stealth kit.  Endurance design. Include self repair and ammo and fuel restock. Heavy weapons across all categories.  Key them to Lena’s biometrics. Maximum compute capacity but bodyguard protocol only. Lethal force preauthorized in any case where her life is at risk.]

[Fabbers warming up.  Six hours for the first two.]

Kara rubs her thumb along Lena’s cheek, leaving an invisible layer of circuits and plastic.

[Target the transmat on that marker.  The instant they’re done transmat them to her but they stay  in stealth mode.]

[Of course, Lady Kara.]

_Six hours, Mercy Graves. I’m trusting you with her safety for six more hours._

“Why do you have to go, though, Kara?”

“Lena, love, look down.”

They’re floating.

 _Like in Buffy the Vampire Slayer,_ Kara thinks.   _Willow actually had real game._

Lena squeaks in surprise and clings tighter to Kara's neck and fumbles with her dress.  Kara tilts her neck, hoping Lena will keep digging.

[Kolex, display the sigil and then go dark.]

Lena’s eyes go wide.  She finally believes it.  Believes Kara came up to her and revealed herself and her feelings simply because because she felt like it.  

Lena chews her lip.

“So you have to go be a hero.  Be safe, Kara. You promised a second date and I don’t deal well with failure.”

 _Tutoring, don’t fail me know,_ Kara hopes.

“I will be there, _grá mo chroí_.”

_< Love of my heart.>_

“How fast can you fly?” Lena demands.

“Fast.  Why?”

“Because I need you before you go.  I’ll hurry. Put your hand over my mouth.”

Kara’s pronunciation was either hilariously bad or perfect because Lena is whining and clamping her legs around Kara and trying to grind out a quick orgasm on Kara’s abs.

_So relaxed Lena is lots of fun!_

Kara covers her mouth--the lady asked nicely--and holds as still and stiff as she can to offer Lena as much firmness and friction as the ridiculous position allows.

Lena’s breath is soaking Kara’s palm and her hips are finally finding a rhythm of quick, short strokes.

“You’re amazing Lena.  Beautiful and brave. A bit crazy for doing this here.  But I love that too. Take what you want. Don't be shy."

"Come for me,” Kara purrs.

Kara tries one of her old exercises from Shavo-Tahiko, tensing her back and her belly.  

“Come for me, Lena.”

Moments later Lena presses into her and screams into her hand, tears taking the rest of her mascara away.

“Can you stand?  I need to go.”

“Mercy can help me if I fall.  Go. But come back to me,” Lena begs.  “Soon.”

_Wouldn’t want to promise something I can’t deliver.  Too many people have lied to her already._

[Kolex, what’s the latest scan from the listening post?]

[No ships in system.]

“I’ll be back.  I certainly have something to look forward to, don’t I?”

 

  

* * *

 

**July 7, 2006  | Kara Danvers**

Southeast California

62,000 feet altitude / Five times the speed of sound

 

Shockwaves whip past Kara’s face and her cape thrashes over her shoulder in a vortex of supersonic air.

[Kolex, status.]

[Am I not Blue Beetle?]

[Fine!]

[The aircraft is a Boeing 747 with major modifications.  The drones you deployed report it deploying chaff and flares to defeat incoming missiles.  Cannon fire to the fuselage and wings has had no effect.]

[So they started firing at the engines.]

[Correct.]

[Attacking craft?]

[They are F-22 Raptors. Markings consistent with the 422nd Combat Squadron out of Alaska.]

_American jets.  Firing on a British airliner that...somehow has defenses?  Armor? Precisely none of that is good._

[That’s a hell of a detour.]

[This is their target.  They are approaching bingo fuel but keeping up pursuit.]

_Kolex watches too many movies with Alex._

[Bingo fuel?]

[Fifty percent.  Minimum fuel needed to return to base.]

[Do I have anyone in the Air Force who owes me a favor?  I do this and I’m declaring war on the United States.]

[Negative. You have provided direct assistance to the _USS John F. Kennedy_ but she is in the Sea of Hormuz.]

[Put me through.]

“Captain Markus?  This is Blue Angel.  Need a favor.”

“Glad to.  Stop a meltdown with your bare hands and you can ask anything you like.”

“Is there any good reason why some Air Force fighter would be shooting at an airliner over Arizona?  Big one. Hundreds of passengers. That’s terrorism, right?”

“Sure as hell sounds like it.  Ensign! Get me PacComm. Figure out what those damned missile-heads are up to!”

“Keep me posted, Captain.  Got some hard choices to make.”

“Moment of your time, Blue Angel?” the captain asks.  “Something I’ve learned is that the flag doesn’t make the soldier.  Her courage does. Whole ship’s rooting for you...no matter what.”

“Solid copy.”

[Blue Beetle?  Where is Alex?]

[Stand by.  It appears you have thirty seven encrypted messages from Alex, all sent via Echo using entangled particles.]

[What?  Play all, half volume, overlap summary mode.]

“Kara, where the fu-“

“We’re on an Air Force passenger jet, trying to get to Sanct-“

“Sixty two refuge-“

“Taking fire.  Three engin-”

“Fuckfuckfuck!  Engine four is stalled!”

“-ck!  This hurts.”

_Alex is hurt._

[Put me through.]

“Alex, I’m here!’” Kara screams into the helmet.  “Please be alive.”

“Kara?”

“You’re alive,” Kara croaks.

She happy-cries into the inside of her visor.

_Install an interior defogger before next run._

“No thanks to your timing.  Next time, call your big sister before she gets a chest full of shrapnel.”

“I will, big sister.  You always have Plan S.”

“Think you can get these assholes away from us?”

“They’re Air Force, Alex.  I can’t just kill them!”

“They’re traitors…I think paid off by the CIA.  Same guys who shot me.”

[Blue Beetle, disable Scion’s propulsion core.  Redirect that power to the plating. Put the suit in react-only mode.  I’m doing this one manual.]

Alex is hurt.  It’s time for the monster to play.

Kara begins whispering the control words to herself.  

“ _Vhoc, whose gaze brings death…”_

_“Rao, whose power is unending...”_

_“Flamebird, from whom courage flows…”_

_“Ktharra, who burns away our souls, lovely as dawn, patient as death, deep as madness…”_

Crimson fire lights her eyes and in a universe where nothing but her seems to be moving, Kara locks her eyes on the pilot of the nearest jet.

 

 

Kara ends her jump in the middle of the cockpit, throwing her arms out and shrieking a battle cry dredged from the wartime memories of the Destroyer inside her.  

The carbon fiber of the armor and the silicon in the chips and the oxygen and hydrogen and nitrogen in the pilots body are gone.  Erased. Bones were smashed to splinters and then to crumbs and then molecules and finally into primitive particles forever buried in a crumple in the fabric of space.

The two halves of the aircraft tumble towards the desert, engine sputtering to a stop without the front half.

The radio chatter from the other jets is projected inside her headset.

“Fuck!  Boxer is toast!”

“Dozer, Thug, kill whatever that was.”

An alert inside her visor informs Kara that she has been painted with radar.

“That’s right, you murdering sons of bitches,” Kara snarls.  “Hit me with everything you have.”

Missiles drop from dark shapes in the distance and head straight for her.

[On impact, mask my signature.]

The world stops around Kara as the first missile approaches and the hormone spike from the Destroyer graft washes through her.  The casing around the warhead separates with explosive bolts, revealing a cylinder studded with square protrusions.  An explosion tears the missile apart and flings a spray of hardened steel into Kara’s face. Two more follow it in the next split second.

Time starts back up.

Scion’s barriers held.  The outer plating of the suit wobbles and waves like a mis-tuned antique television and Kara is invisible.

[You are invisible to radar, thermal, laser scans and human eyesight, my lady.]

“Tombstone leader, direct hit.  Bandit splashed.”

“Yee-haw!  Finally popped your cherry, Dozer!”

[Kara, long range scans indicate another six jets of the same configuration approaching at six o’clock high.  Two hundred miles.]

“Someone really wants you dead, Alex!”

“I’m told I’m irritating!”

“Six more jets incoming.  I dealt with the first one.  Right now, they think I’m dead. I...I’m not a big fan of killing people.”

“We could use some prisoners,” Alex suggests with a pained hiss.

“Great idea.”

Kara turns straight towards the lead aircraft and pulls alongside him, keeping to the underside of the wing.

[Antenna is located on the starboard side of the nose cone.]

[Thanks, Blue Beetle.]

“Can’t have you warning anybody.”

Kara plunges her superheated fist into the avionics bay, snapping the radio antenna and buckling the plating.

She puts her foot on the engine intake and swings over the jet like riding a bull.  She smashes the cockpit glass, backhands the pilot and fumbles for the ejector seat lever.  The rocket motor smashes the ejection seat into her chin.

"Ow.”

“One of them is out of his jet and I gave him a little smack.  Unconscious.”

“Rinse and repeat, Tinkerbell.  The more the better. They crack quicker if they think their buddies will.”

“The Navy calls me Blue Angel.”

Vasquez’s barking laughter can be heard.

“That is so much better!” she crows.  “We’re calling her that.”

[Lady Kara, the remaining two jets are closing with the aircraft.]

Kara plows into the next jet with far less subtlety, letting the airframe shatter against her crossed arms, ripping the seat loose and pulling the cord.

The last jet accelerates, spraying the remaining engine with cannon fire.

Alex swears over the comm and another voice in the cockpit with her gets on the radio.

“Mayday, mayday, mayday!”

“Anvil Base, this is Paperclip.  We have suffered total engine loss and are going down.”

[Lady Kara, I have twenty new laser scan contacts approaching at speed.  No radar signature. Unknown outline and extremely fast.]

“Alex, did you call for backup?”

“No.  Can’t trust them.”

A pair of shiny charcoal gray craft swoop past Kara, come to a full stop in a burst of green thruster exhaust and then spin around, zeroing in on the remaining Raptor and tearing it apart it with three white lances of...something.  Firing that weapon seemed to bring them to a complete stop so it must have had massive recoil.

The aircraft pull up alongside Kara and each dip their wings to her.  One of the pilots flips up her visor and gives Kara a thumbs up. Their wings run from the cockpit to the engine and swoop down before bending inwards at a sharp angle, meaning the whole aircraft has a triangular outline.

_That looks a lot more like a space fighter than an atmospheric one.  Those are plasma thrusters and I’m pretty sure that was a railgun.  But they're Earthbuilt...the welding screams it._

“Unidentified aircraft, you are interfering with a JSOC operation,” Alex warns them.

“We got you, Blue Angel.  Someone told us you could use a hand.  Call me Hothead. This is Dagger squadron out of Miramar.  The slowpokes behind me are Hammer. Haven’t gotten a chance to fire these babies before.  That’s quite a kick.”

[It’s good, Alex.  They’re Navy. I asked for a favor from an aircraft carrier and I guess the captain told his friends.  These things are way more advanced than the Air Force jets...they went past me, spun in place and railgunned the last jet. You need to get in touch with these guys.  Compare notes.]

[Blue Beetle, transmit the coordinates of the incoming fighters to our new friends.]

“Nice ride!” Kara calls out.

“Got it used!  Can you believe these used to be drapes?”

“Those guys have friends.  I’m pushing their location and speed to you now.”

“Dagger three through eight, get those bastards out of my sky.  Hammer squadron, stay here with the big one. Slipknot, stay on me and Blue Angel.”

“Solid copy, Hothead,” a gravely male voice replies.

Six long flares of green flame light the darkened sky as the fighters move to intercept the crooked jets.  

“Alex, what do you need?”

“Paperclip?”

“I need lift.  I can keep her level and get her down as long as I can keep air over the wings.  How do you feel about a water landing?”

[Separate the outer layers of armor, reboot propulsion and put Scion under the tail.  I’ll take the midsection. Use a resonance scan to check structure before lifting.]

[Understood, Lady Kara.]

Kara feels the outer layers of armor transmat away and slides herself under the plane’s belly at the midpoint between the wings.  She puts her arms out wide and gets the plane on her back.

“Ready to provide lift.”

Alex long, hissing exhalation is clearly pained and that makes Kara’s heart skip.

“How bad, Alex?”

“Not bad.  Just hit the meat.  Why weren't you answering my calls?”

“Think I met the love of my life!”

Alex laughs.

“Who is she?”

“Her initials are LL.”

“Fuck!  You don’t do anything the easy way, do you?”

“If you two are done?" Paperclip demands.  "National City Harbor is twenty miles out.”

[Blue Beetle, launch a transmat beacon on a short range probe.  Prime it in flight and point it at the landing site. The instant the plane doors open I want these folks to have an escape route to Sanctuary.]

 

* * *

  **BONUS SCENES**

* * *

  
****

**July 7, 2006  | Lillian Luthor**

Northwest Iran

LuthorCorp Mineral Facility

 

  
(6:30pm Pacific Time)

 

Lillian’s phone rings.

The contact name is ‘moron’ so she grabs it without hesitation.

“Boss lady?”

“Fuck’s sake, Otis.  Use my name.”

“Mrs. Luthor.”

“Yes.  What?” she demands.  
  
“Found that other freak.  The chick.”

“Where?”

“Kissing your daughter.”

“Otis…” Lillian breathes, her voice like the skin of a frozen corpse.  “Listen to me very, very carefully. Write this down.”

_This is Lena’s last chance.  I’ll give her a second but not a third._

 

* * *

 

**July 8, 2006  | Lena Luthor**

National City, California

Watercliff Hotel, Room 201

 

Lena wakes slowly.  Everything hurts and everything is too bright even with the blackout curtains someone put up.

“Hello, sunshine.”

She cracks one eye and sees Mercy with her jacket open, hand on her pistol grip and an unusually emotional expression on her face.  Given that Lena only knows about Mercy having feelings in the abstract, she can’t read it.

“Hello, Mercy.  Ugh. I got drunk, didn’t I?”

“You did, especially after you fucked that Kara woman in public.  Lucky for you that you descend from a bunch alcohol-proof barbarians.”

“Anything else?  Did I black out?”

“Don’t think so.  Kara gave me her number and I manage to tag her profile before your phone locked.  The dating app has been going nuts. Your phone vibrated right off the table.”

Lena smiles.

“Kara was…”

Mercy’s dark eyes flick up to meet Lena’s.

“I’ve known you since you were a pup, mouse.  That was something I’ve never seen before. I can keep you breathing but that’s not living.  You looked _normal_ when you were with Kara.  Like any other twenty four year old gay woman with blue balls.”

Lena tosses a pillow at Mercy who intercepts it with a combat knife.

“Time is it?” Lena croaks.

“Eleven.  And before you panic, you have nothing scheduled.  I asked that new assistant you hired...Jess?...to wait until Monday.”

Lena licks her damp, foul-tasting lips.

“Television, please.  CatCo or MSNBC and keep it muted.  I want to take it easy.”

Lena rubs her legs together, feeling the ghost of dampness that remains from one real-world  orgasm and a night of dreams that featured Kara and herself and not a stitch of clothing.

_And let my sticky thighs dry before I move._

Mercy complies and even turns down the brightness.

“Guess he finally did it,” Mercy mutters.  “Too public for my tastes. No tactical purpose.”

Lena looks up and sees the headline.

 

 

 

 

>   
>  **BREAKING NEWS:  SUPERMAN DEAD? BOMBINGS AND MISSILES SHAKE METROPOLIS!**

 

“Subtitles,” Lena rasps.  “And a glass of water.”

The silent television tells a story of a dozen well-timed bombings across Metropolis, mostly at LuthorCorp facilities and a barrage of Kryptonite-tipped missiles hidden at each site that fired at the Man of Steel as he swooped in to rescue the stranded and unbury the dead.  

Six times.  Six times Lex hit that man with the one thing he fears, the one thing that can kill him...and Superman persisted.  He kept going even as the footage makes clear how wounded he was: veins on his forehead bulging with green filth, eyes sunken and skin sallow and flaking.

It’s abundantly clear that without Superwoman’s arrival, he would have been dead.  Even without most of her armor--only a black bodysuit and face mask--she somehow strode through the toxic clouds and the blasts from dozens of warheads without injury.

Superwoman--no, Kara, the woman Lena loves--put her life at risk to save her family from Lena’s family.

She was on the scene for one hundred and thirty four seconds, the anchor says.  When she took to the air with her cousin’s limp body in her arms, every last missile launcher was slag and she had cut holes in the ruins for rescuers to enter.  Half the windows downtown were broken from her supersonic criss-crossing of the city.

Fires burned and toxic gas hung over offices and plants and a Luthor Foundation after school program that would have been packed with children and staff two hours later.  

Then she hears something that makes Lena’s stomach turn.

Thirty three dead.  So far.

“Why, Lex?  Why do that when you could have just let it be?” Lena whispers.

Lena flops her hand on the bedside table and grabs her phone.  She goes into Raya, opens messaging and scrolls down an ocean of emojis and links---probably to cute animal videos if the emojis are an indication--and sappy pick-up lines to the place where she can type.

_I think I've gone full U-Haul for this girl._

 

 

 

 

Kara  
  
I love you, Kara Zor-El. I am so sorry my brother hurt you.  
  
I understand if you never want to see me again.   
  
I deserve that. And more.  
  
But I hope that I could treat you to a second date.  
  
If you’ll have me?

 

The ellipsis of a pending text message has never hurt so much.  It feels like someone is peeling Lena’s heart with a knife to see if it's worth letting her live.

 

 

 

 

Kara  
  
 OMG! BABE!  U BACK! 

 

“Text talk?” Lena scoffs.  "Peasant." 

 

 

 

 

Kara  
  
Need u so much, Lena.  Had a shit nite and shittier today.  
  
I luv u + I need 2 be held.  
  
Baby cuz is safe but I can’t watch this.  
  
6:15 tmrw nite, CatCo Plaza.    
  
B ready 2 dance!  
  
Fav ice cream!  
  
Gimme da name!

 

* * *

 

**July 8, 2006  | Maggie Sawyer**

Austria

 

Maggie has a hot woman spread open before her, wet, tangy flesh in her mouth and on her tongue and the birds are chirping and life is good.  She is ready to _shoot_ that fucking cell phone.  

“Alex,” Maggie mumbles, voice distorted by Alex’s clit pinched in her lips.  “Make that stop.”

Alex reaches up with a rubbery arm--still got it, Sawyer!--and tosses her phone into the cooler they brought.

Maggie told herself and her lady that Alex needed twenty four hours of continual training in eating pussy, four hours between switch-offs and she is damn close to making it reality.  Why Alex believed that crap is beside the point. She took her up on the offer.  Maggie's vision is blurry and her eyes ache from not sleeping and her legs might not work right now but she only has twenty eight minutes to go.  Alex offered an ‘encore' when time was up and Maggie expects to drop like a rock before the second orgasm.

When she’s passed out in Alex’ arms...then they can cuddle.

“Maggie,” Alex pants.  “Like that, just like that.  Please. I’m close.”

Maggie can’t do anything without breaking off and Alex’s desperate scrabbling in the sleeping bag is too fucking perfect to disrupt.  If only she could reach a nipple or _something_ that would push Alex over the edge.

 

 

Alex’s tongue is doing something in her ear and Maggie cannot stay still.  She wriggles and writhes and tries to escape the tickling but Alex holds her tight with those damn long arms of hers and those hands...Maggie feels like a baby antelope pinned down by a lioness.

_Lioness with the gayest fucking mane ever._

“Morning, baby.”

“Morning.”

“Time is it?”

“Late afternoon.”

“S’nice.  I pass out?”

Alex nods, smug grin on her face.

“Thought so.”

“Can I ask you for some advice on being gay?”

“Uh, you’re pretty goddamn gay, babe...ask my pleasantly bruised lady-bits.”

Alex snorts.

“I mean romantic advice.  For my sister. I’m shit at dates.”

“No you’re not.  Think you melted my vag.  Can’t walk. Don’t care.”

“Dates with clothes on, then.”

Maggie yawns.

“That’s something we can work on.  What’s Little Danvers need?”

“Speakerphone?”

“Fine.”

“Alex?”

“Yeah.  Her and me.”

“Hiya, Maggie!  You sound...out of it.  Did you smoke a ton of weed or somethin-”

Maggie rolls her eyes.

“Ohmygod!  Alex, I’m so happy for you!

“Back to the question, please Little Danvers.  You’re killing the snuggles.”

“Right.  So I met this amazing woman and we both had really shitty days.  Me saving Alex’s lif-”

“Thanks for that,” Maggie interrupts.

“Totally welcome.  So that and my cousin being attacke-”

“What?” Alex roars.

“Kal’s fine.  Once I realized that there was Kryptonite on the field, I bopped over to help him out.  He’s at the fortress for decon and treatment by the bots.”

“Kara…” Alex snarls.

“Alex, I’m somehow immune.  If I ingest Bad K...that's when it gets me.  As in I get bad food poisoning. But one of the Bats had a Kryptonite knife and I accidentally stabbed myself with it trying to write a note.  Didn’t break the skin.”

“How?” Maggie wonders.  “That stuff is supposed to be dangerous.  An ounce of that goes for more than a ton of cocaine on the black market...and how do you know the street name for it?” 

"Plead the fifth!" Kara whimpers.

“It is,  Alex.  But more to Kal.  It’s just contaminated fuel that stuck to the hull of starships involved in search and rescue post-explosion.  Me knowing that makes it easier for me to play it safe.  Doesn’t put out dangerous doses at distance. It has to touch us. Alex...whatever surgery my dad made my pod do to me?”

“Yeah, Kara?  You never really talked about it.”

“It was deep, Alex.  New organs.  Double layer skull, extra spine and arm and leg bones running parallel to my old ones.  Stripped my skin and put down dermal armor under the replacement skin.  Implanted three different parasites...that I know of.”

“Dad thought it would be funny to mix my body with the frozen remains of this kind of artificial soldier we used as brainwashed shock troopers during our evil domination phase.  Burned a shit-ton of training, wartime memories and probably some bonus PTSD in to my brain along with a new personality.”

“Bigger, stronger, faster, crazier, gayer?” Maggie asks.

“Yeah," Kara sighs.  "First four, at least.”

Alex is rubbing her temples and dropped her phone so Maggie places it on Alex’ sweaty, fragrant abs.

“That’s something we should talk about.  How long have you known?”

“Year-ish?”

“What the donkey-fucking hell do you mean...a year?” Alex hollers.  “You’re supposed to tell me these things.”

“You mean like ‘hi, sis...turns out I’m a weapon of mass destruction that is banned by galactic law and no big but I have a sociopathic second personality now’ sort of telling you things?  I didn’t know how. It was too scary.”

Maggie groans.

“Little Danvers, if you don’t get to the date question I am going to fuck your sister to embarrass you and make you get off the phone.”

Kara giggles.

“Sorry.  Got sidetracked.  So...there’s this girl.  Lena Luthor. Rich, gorgeous and I’m pretty sure abused by her family.  And with her brother in trouble, people are dumping that hate on her.  She thinks I hate her because of what her brother did but I don’t. I want...I want everything with her, Alex.  So much it hurts.”

“I need to get her a gift.  Ooh!  I have a couple of those one-seater starships left and I’m pretty sure I can get a star map cooked up of House of El’s holdings.  I could give her a star system! Do you think she’d like a binary red or a triple white dwarf? The red has an oceanic moon but no life.   Great views.  The whites have a small jungle planet and and lovely gas gia-.”

“Kara!” Alex shouts.  “She’s a human. She’s probably not expecting you to bequeath the literal heavens on the second date.”

“Doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve it,” Kara sniffs.

“You’ve got it bad, Little Danvers,” Maggie teases.

“I know and I love it.”

“Just get her something that you think she will think is special,” Maggie suggests.  “Little help, babe? I don’t know anything about Little Luthor.”

“She’s adopted, right?” Alex asks.

“Yeah.  Doesn’t know her birth mothers name.  Wants to but she can’t dig it up.”

“I’ll send you that portion of her FBI file.  Help with that might be something she would think is really sweet.”

“Great!” Maggie hollers.

“Bye-bye, Little Danvers!”

Maggie slides down the sleeping bag and into a cocoon of fleece and Alex’s skin and scent and _wet_   _heat._ She hooks her hands around Alex’ hip bones, takes in a lungful of musk and plunges her tongue inside.

“Fuuuuuck!  Maggie! My sister is still on the damn phone!”

“Fuck ‘er,” Maggie grumbles.  “I’m doing this.”

Alex’s cell phone bonks the top of Maggie’s head through the sleeping bag.

“Ow.”

 


	15. OVER THE WIRE:  Breaking News From CatCo Worldwide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "OVER THE WIRE" is a series of sound bites from news broadcasts or political speeches, covering other events around the world over a period of time.
> 
> This installment covers three days in July 2006.

 

* * *

  

 

 

> **"Know what the New York Time called this picture?  'The Broken Family.'    Superwoman carrying the body of a man she has known since infancy.  Her last living relative.  The last remaining member of her species.  A man is _dead,_ Jacob _._ Killed by a one-percenter on an ego trip!"**
> 
> **"My clien-"**
> 
> **"Come on, fu-"**

The television bleeps.

 

 

> **"-ing give it up.  You're a public relations hack, not a defense lawyer.   So spin this.  Tell me why should Superwoman have to bury her cousin while Lex Luthor what?  Drinks in Monaco with supermodels?"**
> 
> **"It's a free country.  Lex has not been charged, let alone convicted of a crime.  Just because some foreign bureaucrat in the Hague wants him doesn't mean he has to appear."**
> 
> **"It's also a country without _kings,_ Jacob.  Your client seems to think he is one."**

Kara lifts off and flies over to the television mounted on the Fortress' wall.  How exactly satellite TV got installed here is a story she wants to hear.

Alura sniffles in her arms.  This being in her arms--her cousin's firstborn and carrying her mother's name--is more than Kara can process.  How is Kara supposed to teach them their house's heritage when she can hardly think just from looking at that face? 

_Because Lois asked me and Lois Lane is not a woman to disappoint._

"Is my daddy dead?"

"No, sweetie.  He's just sick."

"How do you know?"

"Alura, honey?" 

"Yes, aunty?"

_Sure, kid.  Just break my heart with one word._

"Close your eyes.  Open your ears."

Alura scrunches her little face up and Kara almost forgets how to float.

_Creature, if I let you free...if you walk my mind...will you aid me in protecting her?   Speak now and promise me your strength to protect her or I will purge you, even at the cost of my own life._

_Scion of El, we are not named Creature.  We are named Ferocity and we accept._

Another thousand battles of awful bloom in memory like ink sinking into water.  She chokes back vomit at the idea that something in  _her_ was once the body that did those things.

"At least I got what I needed," Kara sighs.

_Replicating the wavelength, heat and ultraviolet characteristics of sunlight is a cinch now.  All I had to do is let a lunatic share my head forever._

Kara tucks curly black hair--almost like Clark's--behind one of Alura's ears.

"S'warm," Alura murmurs.  "Tickles."

"It's yellow sunlight, honey.  Just yellow-ier and sunlighti-ier."

"Those aren't words, aunty.  Mama would have taught me if they were."

_No argument there.  Lois is a one woman battle of the sexes._

"Listen close."

"I hear..." Alura pauses. "I hear mama swearing at the man with the cigar voice."

Kara tries to keep her laughter quiet.

"She works for him."

_C'mon kid, I just put ten years worth of sunlight exposure into my fingertip.  Girl up and use those supersenses.  Because aunty Kara needs a nap now._

"I hear...aunty Alex making macaroni and cheese."

_Thousand yards away.  Solid start._

"What else?"

"I hear his heartbeat!" Alura squeals.  "And mama's and the baby's and Alex's and yours.  Yours is...really loud!"

Kara kisses her forehead.

"Because those are the most important people in your life.  So make sure you can always hear their heartbeats.  When you're scared, hearing that will make you brave."

Alura opens her eyes and stares right into Kara's.  Two little eyes bluer and deeper than the arctic ocean Kara carried them over.

_Oh boy.  Those are Kal's baby blues but at Lois' power level._

"Aunty Alex said you have a date."

"I do.  Her name is Lena."

"The bad man's sister."

"She is."

"Is she bad?"

"Alura...are you as bad as your baby sister?"

"No."

"See?  Everyone's different."

"Does that mean the baby is bad enough that she has to go to the Hauge thingy?  Like the bad man does?"

Kara laughs.

"Good question.  Your mother's daughter indeed."

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

> **"This is Siobhan Smythe for CatCo Worldwide with breaking news.  I am standing on the steps of the US Capitol Building where I am told that the senate has nominated Barack Obama, a state senator who is running unopposed for US Senator for the state of Illinois, to serve as president _pro tempore_ of the senate.  The governor of Illinois says his office is ready to appoint Mr. Obama should the criminal proceedings against Senator Ryan continue.  If that course continues, with the _pro tempore_ slot filled and speaker Boehner planning to resign, Mr. Obama will become the 44th president of the united states.  This ends a succession battle that has lasted 117 days and put both parties under intense scrutiny."**
> 
> **"Many Democrats in the congress, particularly the House, are praising speaker Boehner for resigning when the chain of succession reached him.  Other in the political class claim this is merely a ploy to curry favor but the fact remains that the Republicans could have held the presidency if Boehner had ignored the calls for his resignation."**
> 
> **"Though virtually unheard of outside his home state Mr. Oba-"**

 

A swarthy and long-fingered hand reaches out to the bedside table, seizes the remote and shuts the TV off.  The polished and engraved steel of a pair of armored bracers flickers in the moonlight.  A smaller and paler hand reaches out from under the blankets and peels the remote from her fingers.

"Get back under here."

"Yes, my love.  Did you hear?"

"Hmm.  It's a start.  He hasn't one any elections yet...but if he does, maybe."

"There is no maybe.  I know war.  I know strategy.  This is a crack in the walls.  So your time will come, _mi amor_."

* * *

 

 

"So this is Earth, huh?"

Lysene kicks off from the last step of the shuttles ramp and lets gravity carry her into the sand.  Her gig bag is slung over her shoulder.  Six hundred kilos of gear and seventy more of white sand.  Myne and Ki are already dirtside and checking their wrist computers for information.

"Pick you back up in six days, yeah?" the pilot calls.

"Give us two days and we'll confirm.  Play it by ear, stiff."

"Stiff?" the helgie laughs, mandibles clacking.

"Haven't heard that one in a while."

"We're classy like that!"

The shuttle warps out on an arc perpendicular to the surface.  The agent that hired them had the humans leave a cell phone on a rock right here.  Blinking green lights generally mean the same thing anywhere in the galaxy.

"Hello?"

"CatCo Events, this is Trish.  Are you calling to schedule or to ask about a show?"

 _Human women's voices are...delicious._ Lysene decides.

"We're the band.  Calling to confirm for the Seashell on July 9th."

Hopefully those words were all in the right language and calendar system.  Because that's all the card gave her.  

"I see...it looks like that is," the voice at the other end mixes with the clacking of...physical keys?

_Black preserve me...this place is primitive._

"That is a group called 'Death and Fucking Love Poems'.  Listed as 'gravity punk / dance' on the ad.  Whatever that is.  Is that you?"

"That's us."

"Do you need any help with gear or lodging?"

Lysene looks at her bandmates.  

_We need a couple bodies in bed._

"Depends.  Are _you_ offering?" she purrs.

"Never know.  We'll have to see what some front row tickets get you."

Lysene makes a kissy sound after the line goes dead.  She turns over the card for the agency that hired her.

_Long time since I've seen a Kryptonian sigil on a piece of actual paper._

 

* * *

 

 

 

> **A model zips a black mesh bodysuit up to her neck and puts on an oversized spherical helmet right out of Jules Verne.  The scene around her flashes and she's a robot with a shotgun and it flashes again and she's a samurai sharpening her blade.**
> 
> **"Explosions you can feel," the narrator purrs.**
> 
> **"Scenery you can touch."**
> 
> **"Characters you can fall in love with."**
> 
> **"Worlds you create with the power of your voice.  No limits, no scripts, no ratings.  Only your imagination."**
> 
> **"This isn't a game.  This isn't gear.  This isn't just the future of gaming.  This is the endgame."**
> 
> **"We are Galaxy Games and this is the Gestalt Series. The most immersive virtual reality environment ever created and unprecedented computing power..."**
> 
> **The woman takes off the helmet, unzips the suit and slides it under her couch next to a gleaming black rectangle.**
> 
> **"...all in your home.  No subscriptions, no internet needed.  Full control.  Gestalt.  In stores now."**

 

Winn's finger hovers over the 'post' button.

"Kolex, you sure she's OK with this?"

"Lady Kara has authorized it and I am working on a dedicated production facility."

"Right.  Breaking the internet...now."

He hits post, sits back and spends all night watching the counter on the online store soar.

_Video games from a culture a quarter million years more advanced.  Ought to be enough to zap my student loans._

 

* * *

  

Alex picks up her cell phone.  The contact listed is 'homewrecker'.  She breathes deep, swallows a bunch of questions she has no business asking and accepts the call.

"Go for Danvers."

"It's Lena."

"Lena, hi!"

Alex sputters, trying to think about how  _happy_ Kara sounded and not about how every second of military training she has is telling her Lena might be a threat.  Because if Lena is a threat then a few million pages of FBI file on her family didn't do anybody any good.

"It's all right." Lena chortles.

"I'm dating your baby sister.  We can...grow into each other."

"Right," Alex sighs.  "Thanks for that."

'I wonder if I could give a report on my brother?"

"Were you not truthful with the FBI?"

Lena scoffs.

"I prefer Kara to prison.  I told them everything.  This is information I want to give to a  _soldier_ not a lawyer.  The sort of information a _soldier_ could use."

"I can be free in an hour."

 

* * *

 

Father Shelley reaches for his collar, tugging it loose.  The window is open and a cold rainy wind blows in.  He reaches out to close it.

Kara grabs his hand and kicks in his left knee.

"Father...you have sinned."

She lifts him up and slams him into his desk, shattering his glasses.

"This the right one, Sister?"

The nun in the shadows by the bookcase nods.

"Yes.  That's the one the boys complain about."

Kara puts her hand on the back of his head and pushes harder.  He can't even turn his eyes right now without further pain.

"Happy to help.  Can you have the information when I leave?"

"For someone who cares for our children, anything."

"Who would I be if I didn't?  Thank you.  I know that file is confidential.  I swear to you the only thing I want it for is the happiness of the girl in it.  She's an amazing woman."

[Blue Beetle?]

[Contacting the Ministry of Justice...]

"Hello?"

"Yes.  I need to report someone abusing a child."

 

 


	16. Women of Steel, Butterflies of Stomach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":  
> Kara takes her green-eyed girl out for something sweet, Detective Sawyer keeps dropping off alien prisoners in person for some dumb reason, Maggie deals with some slick-dressing weirdos at work, we get to meet NCPD Precinct 18, Maggie looking a mess means Alex is too gay to Army but Vasquez has her back, CADMUS behaves badly, Kara needs quite a gift for quite the woman and we learn some new facts about Elysian Creamery: the only ice cream place with 4,000 locations, an eighty-five percent female staff, not one incident of armed robbery, and a safe place sticker for domestic violence refugees on every door.
> 
> OUR NEXT EXCITING EPISODE:  
> Lena has big top energy, Kara feels bad, Kara was naughty, the government decides it needs to take a stand on Superwoman which is easier than they thought, Kara gets a badge, Winn is big in games, Kara gets a pad, Lena has to fend off some booth babes at E3, Eliza has a random encounter, the Danvers sisters and their plus ones head home for a holiday, Nadia was maybe on to something with the Jewish thing, a wild Mason appears and engages in posturing rituals with Lena and Mercy Graves has feelings...really broken feelings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **STYLE GUIDE:**  
>  " _Italics in quotes_ " are foreign languages.  
> " _< Brackets>_" in quotes and italics are passages translated from a foreign language. Some passages I will not translate.  
>  _Italics_ are thoughts or observations and always the POV character.  
> [Brackets] are interactions with artificial intelligences and cybernetics, verbal or non-verbal.  
>  **Bold and prefixed lines** are text messages (example--KDKapow: is Kara's main handle)  
>   
>  **Bold and block-quoted lines** are recorded messages, radio communications, songs or poems, etc.  
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Bold text between horizontal lines indicates notes, emails or or writing.**
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> **REFERENCE GUIDE:**  
>  Please see "For Your Eyes Only" in CODEX for DEO personnel, roles and codenames.  
> Please see "Coursework for a Minor In Alien Studies" in CODEX for information on alien races in the multiverse.  
> Please see "Kryptowiki: Cast and Crew" for a list of all characters. (upcoming)  
> Please see "Kryptowiki: Mechanical" for a breakdown of major Krytponian and interstellar-era technologies. (upcoming)  
>   
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:**  
>  Given that I'm starting "Adversaries" as my Lucifer (Fox) inspired teens+evil small town story, some of these characters Maggie brushes past here will be recognizable...they are the adult versions of the teen heroes in "Adversaries". However they will not occur again in this story because "Adversaries" will **not** be fanfic. Themes borrowed, not entire characters and not names (unless the names are millennia old public domain religious concepts). That is why the detective's name was changed along with Lucifer and Maze's appearances and affects. I may, someday soon, self publish that one or more likely a sequel and I don't want it crossing any legal wires.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> TRIVIA #1:  
> Ashford, County Wicklow is Katie McGrath's birthplace and the river Vartry runs through it. I'll google street view an address when we get around to visiting.
> 
> TRIVIA #2:  
> Countess Constance Markievicz is a real person who really fought in St Stephen's Green, a park in Dublin in the Easter Rising of 1916. A notable revolutionary in the cause, she was wounded in the fighting but not executed as many of the male leaders were. The rebel garrison at St Stephen's Green held out six days before surrendering to a British commander who ironically was married to Markievicz's cousin. She really had a daughter named Maeve who married a Polish fellow and really had one child (a daughter). The affair in Belfast in the 1970s that created Lena's mother is my fiction...far as anyone knows!  
> [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constance_Markievicz ]
> 
> TRIVIA #3:  
> Markievicz also brought Maragret Skinnider to the fight ("the Schoolteacher Sniper") who I heartily encourage you to look up. Real well-rounded Irishwoman, that one! Spends a week shooting British soldiers and then spends decades teaching and leading teaching unions for the wee ones. They are believed to have met as suffragettes first and if victorious, the Irish Republic detailed in the Proclamation of 1916 **would have been** the first nation with women's suffrage. The United States beat them to it as the Irish Free State did not exist until 1922, after the US enacted women's suffrage. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Skinnider]  
> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Irish_Free_State#Initiative_and_referendum]

**SciFi Sapphic Jam  (Requires Spotify)**

 

Maggie gunfight scene --

 **"Mystery" by Indigo Girls:** [ https://open.spotify.com/track/3yiWZkEYp6tiq2iQseb6LA?si=HTHTyCljQtGNn-eFVCz9jQ ](https://open.spotify.com/track/3yiWZkEYp6tiq2iQseb6LA?si=HTHTyCljQtGNn-eFVCz9jQ)

**"She's a Bad Mama Jama" by Carl Carlton:**     [ https://open.spotify.com/track/7KEguG3CDoestm50v6XET5?si=zWXKO2A9RiKEd3hsnkWlCQ ](https://open.spotify.com/track/7KEguG3CDoestm50v6XET5?si=zWXKO2A9RiKEd3hsnkWlCQ)

 

Kara and Lena stand up to Lillian --

 **"Power of Two" by Indigo Girls:**     [ https://open.spotify.com/track/4peEqwtnP8CoTZRFkDUqnC?si=MBkuOmmoQ5aCsFqfLtNEKA ](https://open.spotify.com/track/4peEqwtnP8CoTZRFkDUqnC?si=MBkuOmmoQ5aCsFqfLtNEKA)

 

Lena's ancestors and their comrades --

**1916 Commemorative Concert by the Wolfe Tones**

  * "Road to the Rising"           <https://open.spotify.com/track/1yfYU7UrcNwoLvjjJJ9Ihy?si=kTpI4z5GSJCwFCQaUUDU_w>
  * "Margret Skinnider"            <https://open.spotify.com/track/0ZCrHdQfqLgJVb0PAarc8P?si=RpNewbOkSBqYJtigni883g>
  * "Proclamation of 1916"      <https://open.spotify.com/track/65Gs3zMhfBKRcdqEaiUtJY?si=h8Hhg56wQ0yWBcS_d98jZQ>



 

 

Sam recalls the one that got away -

 **“I Still Love You” by Jennifer Hudson** [ **https://open.spotify.com/track/01NOf0kshWKd3SCm1nTuGb?si=GAx739s7RKWto1Zfnb7gWQ** ](https://open.spotify.com/track/01NOf0kshWKd3SCm1nTuGb?si=GAx739s7RKWto1Zfnb7gWQ)

 

Kara explodes when exposed to  ice cream -

 **“Cherry Bomb” by The Runaways:** <https://open.spotify.com/track/7cdnq45E9aP2XDStHg5vd7?si=zDE4XKdrQ62aZrpLmOgfrA>

 

Kara goes after despots -

 **“Don’t Give a Damn About My Reputation”  by Joan Jett & The Blackhearts   ** <https://open.spotify.com/track/0hdqh5GuLFdfmbUhpgwGQj?si=hCTBASTVShOluZAzhB8t9Q>

 

* * *

 

**July 10, 2006 | Maggie Sawyer**

National City, California 

National City Police Department, Central Station (Precinct 18)

Floor Six, Serious Crimes / Vice / Homicide

 

The bullpen is in fine form today: loud, unpleasant and smells of men from thirty feet.

Maggie stiffens her arm and tightens her grip on the perp--human for a change of pace--a bit of pain for him to hide how motherfucking exhausted she is after the double shift.

 _It can’t be good that an armed robbery with no alien guns in it is like comfort food now,_ Maggie realizes.

“Geez!” he whines. “I’m coming with, already.”

“Hitchcock,” Maggie shouts, grinning big. “You’re back. Process this wise-ass for me? Old times sake?”

Officer Hitchcock finishes whatever note she was busy writing with a swish of the pen and stands up, another beat cop sliding into place behind her. Elaine Hitchcock is a mountain of a woman, freckles and pale skin jacketing a six-foot steel core made of workouts, clean eating, drinking Maggie under the table and more than a splash of ‘fuck off’. Her ancestors must be the reason for all the jokes about Scotsmen being giant axe-swinging barbarians and the reason for all the jokes about redheaded women being crazed sex weasels.

Sadly--or maybe luckily--for the gay girls of the city, she’s seems to be straight. Maggie likes herself some hard cheesecake much as the next girl but...Elaine is more than she's willing to bite off.

Elaine just got back from an extended vacation visiting her mother’s family on an honest-to-God sheep farm outside Glasgow. Maggie was promised a tour of accents and description of the horrifying foodstuffs she barraged Instagram with.

Elaine rolls her eyes at Maggie. “Sure thing, princess.”

She clamps a big hand on the man’s shoulder and squeezes--hard--before he can make a wisecrack about Maggie.

“Not a cocksucking word, you scrawny little cunt.”

_Guess she really made the most of that trip back home...I practically needed subtitles._

Jack Green is leaning against the coffee machine, he’s wearing artistically damaged jeans, a black button down and that ridiculous gelled up-do of gray hair. He’s shooting her his trademark grin...one so slippery could peel paint on a used car. A grin that’s probably put dozens of women on their back in the last thirty years. A grin that his wife should consider cheating even though she knows Jack ends up with her each night.

He makes a line for Maggie and thumps her on the back. She starts up to rabbit punch him but smacks him on the shoulder with it instead. It’s their little game.

“Maggie! You’re still not dead,” he laughs.

“You’re still old. I’m still not straight.”

She hisses in pain when his hug brushes against one of her not-yet-finished bruises from the takedown.

“Oh, sorry.”

“S’fine, Jack. Had it checked already. Just need to wait for the aspirin.”

Jack clucks his tongue at her.

“You’re a detective now, kid. Let the pups do the biting, huh? They need the practice.”

He nods towards Hitchcock.

“If I let Hitchcock do my takedowns, none of the perps would live long enough to learn anything, let alone go to jail.”

Jack slides a hot cup of coffee into her hand, snags the spraycan of whipped cream and dolls it up. He hands her a cinnamon packet and she dumps it in.

“Just like at Starbucks,” he jokes. “As for Hitchcock, you’re not wrong. We’ll save her for Judgement Day. Got some goodies for you in the fish tank.”

 _Human perps go in the tank, weird perps go in fish tanks._ _At least they had a lingo when I got here._

“What you got?” Maggie asks.

He leads her towards the far corner of the building where four large interrogation rooms were built way the hell away from anything but the bathrooms. It was a contracting error but it turned out to be fate because it only took one hushed-up call to the city engineer to re-fit the emergency exit and National City Police Department had a space they could use for non-human perps with access to the station for backup but no passersby.

_Can’t believe they hadn’t thought of setting this up the moment they got an alien or metahuman perp. Of course, if they give me any more men, we’re going to have to get bunk-bed desks._

“Pufferfish, couple guppies, tuna, angelfish. XY, XX plus XY, XX and XY, going down the line. Drunk and disorderly, aggravated assault, reporting a flasher and fuck knows with the last guy.”

“Turn on the vent and let bug-boy dry out. Ask the fight club twins...wait...are they related?” Maggie asks.

 _Helgie, two raxxies, blue thessie...what's an angelfish?_  Maggie wonders.

“Brother and sister, yeah. How’d you know?”

“Tight-knit bunch. Ask them if they hit people with four arms or if they actually bit or clawed anybody. If there was no biting, get me in and I’ll work the DA. Ask the lady if she wants a lady cop to take her statement about the man in the trenchcoat.”

“And the angelfish?”

_Angelfish is a new one. Kryptonian? Did we decide on one for that?_

“What’s his deal?” Maggie asks.

“Silk shirt. Accent. Claims he’s an angel. Has a business card from LAPD but the voicemail didn’t have a name on the box.”

“Angel like praise Jesus and pass the Bible?”

Jack nods.

“Crazy?”

“Not chewing on the walls but...never know. See for yourself. He’s in three, behind the fancy glass your fairy godmother installed.”

“The adjustable stuff? Please tell me you don’t fuck your wife in there,” Maggie groans.

“What wife? Oh. Sharon!” Jack laughs.

“No. I may not know better than to show my lady around the office…”

Maggie shudders.

“...but I do know better than to do anything involving dicks in any space that Maggie Sawyer willed into being.”

Maggie slurps the foam off her coffee with a curl of the tongue she usually reserves for doing other things. For doing things with red hair, hazel eyes and tits hard as apples.

“Good man. I’ll see what he is up to.”

“10-4, shortcake.”

Maggie snorts as Jack ducks into their cubby-hole office they carved into the largest interrogation room. She pulls her personal phone out and sees a text from ‘unknown’ that Alex uses to mask her phone calls from the Bible-jizzers who set Pentagon policy.

 

 

> **[AD changed to ADS]**
> 
> **ADS: Having a good day? Thinking of you!**

_You had to do that, Danvers?_ Maggie wonders, squeezing out a tear. _Alex Danvers-Sawyer?_

Attached is selfie of Alex framed by a shadow--the bottom curve of her breasts--down to the thigh holster, shirt lifted to show off a flash of sweaty abs. Smoke is rising from the arc-pistols’ emitters and a scorecard from the firing range is held at the edge of the frame .

 

 

> **ADS: See what you make me do?**

_Real sorry, yeah. Ninety-four of a hundred with thirty two of fifty shots dead-on. On an off day...six hours of sleep after we fucked each other stupid. Four of which she was freaking out about her sister._

Maggie goes into her phone and fixes her handle to match.

 

 

> **[MS changed to MSD]**
> 
> **MSD: Not so great. Them abs...them boobs...dangerous woman. You’re killing me here, Danvers. There’s always a line for the ladies!**
> 
> **ADS: See ya round, Sawyer. Tonight. By the docks. Upstairs apartment with light on.**
> 
> **MSD: I’ve seen this movie. Bathtub plus ice equals one half the kidneys?**
> 
> **ADS: Bathtub plus bubbles plus home cooked dinner equals I love you.**

_That. That is why I date grownups now. I tell her I had a bad morning and she’s going to make me dinner…it’s sweet. Almost explains why some people think kids are a good idea._

She shoulders the door open and finds herself looking at a thirty-something man with a stubbled chin, honey blonde hair scarcely paler than the whiskers and a jawline so hard it’s almost good enough to belong to a gay woman. He’s wearing designer slacks and a crimson silk shirt, three buttons loosened and has his feet up on the not-exactly-spotless table.

_He’s treating the legs of thousand dollar pants as casually as I treat the sweats I wear when I’m painting or cleaning._

“Detective!” he gushes, holding his hand out. "Lucifer Morningstar."

“She’s gay, you moron,” calls a female voice from the corner nearest the door on their side.

There’s a dark space. Must have busted a light fixture.

“Gay and..." The woman sniffs. "Seasoned. Smoked and rubbed with secret herbs and spices.”

 _That,_ Maggie thinks, _is one voice in a million_.

She feels like a strip of oiled leather was just dragged between her legs.

“Who’s there?” Maggie demands, flexing her fingers in case she has to reach.

“I like her, Lucy. Doesn’t fuck around, goes right for her weapon. Gets to the point. So, cop lady...when we’re done here, mind if I do a line off your nipples?”

Maggie blinks stupidly at the darkened corner.

“I...what?”

“Maze, I think she’s a believer. In the rules.”

“Yes,” Maggie sputters. “Well, that and I will never betray my girlfriend.”

The man at the table claps his hands together, his smile somehow even more blinding. He holds his hands out as if to say ‘See how good I did?’ and show Maggie off to the studio audience.

“Ruth 1-16. Ruth was one of the good ones. Took her prophecy in stride, acted like a damned adult. Naomi…” he sighs. “Naomi could barely get off her knees when Ruth was around.”

“So you’re an angel, huh? Act like you were there when the Bible was written? That’s your whole bit? The whole routine? Nothing left?” Maggie demands.

“Her,” Maggie points at the shadow. “Her act I believed.”

“I do want to fuck you,” the woman in shadow growls. “Continually. Eternally.”

“That’s the difference. Believable motivation!”

Maggie’s entire eighth-grade drama class seems to have come back in one breath, probably as a coping mechanism.

_This is scary as hell._

“I was there,” the man mutters, his eyes dropping from Maggie’s face. “I wouldn’t recommend it. Every miracle has a curse. The version you read in church just depended on who won.”

The door behind her swings open, smacking the edge into Maggie.

A blonde woman with a ponytail pokes her head in. She’s wearing a green turtleneck sweater and has a badge and a semiautomatic on her belt.

“Sorry. Uh...”

“Detective Maggie Sawyer, NCPD.”

Maggie offers her hand without looking, without taking her eyes of the weirdos.

“Detective Rebekah Grimson, LAPD. Call me Grimson.”

Grimson shakes Maggies hand.

“These your lunatics? They had a civilian informant card.”

Rebekah puffs out a breath, jiggling a lock of hair.

“Yeah. They’re my lunatics. What’d they do? Lucifer...I swear to God.”

“Please don’t,” he shivers.

Maggie looks at her notepad.

“Apparently they stuffed every cucumber in a movie executive’s pantry with artificial estrogen...which...why? Gagged him, set up a camera, let’s see, says there was a stripper a riding crop and something about three rabbits and…”

Maggie flips some more pages.

“Jesus! Fuck! What is the matter with you people?” Maggie hollers.

“Did he press charges?” Grimson asks.

“If you were a hotshot producer who--allegedly--got chemically castrated by way of a parade of ruptured cucumber dildos, on camera, while bunnies hopped all over you...would you want to talk about it?”

Grimson snorts.

“Suppose not. So why are they here?”

“What’s so weird about here?”

“I’ve been a cop since I was nineteen. I know what a hushed up task force looks like.”

“This is where we lock up aliens. You don’t have those in LA?”

“With my luck we do...but it’s someone else’s problem.”

“I specialize in alien crime, caped weirdos, people in bat-shaped hats. If you don’t have it yet, you will. Aliens are everywhere. They just don’t usually cause trouble.”

Maggie whips a card out and offers it.

“Your higher-ups need any tips if little green men end up in cuffs, I’m your woman. Ask my bosses here or in Gotham.”

“Thanks. All right, you handsome devils. Let the nice lady go back to work.”

The woman in shadow strolls out.

 _Maze_ , Maggie realizes. _Whoever that is._

Her skin is paper white and her hair the most elaborate set of dyed braids Maggie has ever seen. Black, red, black, not one strand crossed over. The braid is laid down across her right side. She’s wearing tight leather pants, a bustier with polished chains running around each band and a motorcycle jacket. A pair of Chinese style dragons are embroidered in the leather with some metallic layer on top. Green and Blue. They wind from the calves of her pants up to the bustier and their clashing jaws draw attention to the valley of her cleavage. Flames emblazon the entirety of her jacket, orange and yellow and shot through with wisps of smoke where the leather was not altered. The half-unzipped jacket hints at hard shapes on her hips--weapons the arresting officer missed?--and her motions are those of someone who practiced for years.

Right now the vibe those move give off is fifty-fifty between pole dancing and kung-fu.

“Lady’s feelings were hurt so she asked me for a favor,” Maze shrugs. “I do great favors.”

She pauses beside Maggie, her breath hot on the cheek. Unusually hot. Fireplace and bearskin rug hot, not steamy home-cooked meal.

“Bolivian. Quality shit. Little spiral around the nipple. Put some on my tongue and slide it into your mouth. Let that soak in first, ping pong around your brain. Breathe you in, fill my lungs with you and finish the last grains with my tongue. Pop you like a cork,” she breathes.

“You have not lived…”

Maggie waves her hands to keep Maze, that hot breath, and the surprisingly tactile fantasy back.

“No thanks.”

“Thanks for the assist, Grimson.”

“Thanks for housing the peanut gallery, Sawyer.”

As she leads them off, Grimson playfully smacks Lucifer and then Maze on the back of the head with her notepad. Maze’s tongue zips out like a striking snake and slowly rims the back of Grimson's ear.

Maggie reaches for her radio.

“You good Jack?”

“Peachy.”

“I need to take five. Angelfish was...look, I need five minutes. Intense. Especially the woman he had with him.”

“What woman? It was just him.”

_I'm losing my mind! Guess I need ten._

 

 

A brain flattening quiet has set in over the bullpen by noon. With twenty cops in the room, a suspicious lack of fresh crimes and a dwindling supply of actionable leads, nerves are running high and superstitious talk abounds.

Please not my radio, please not my radio, please not my radio…

“This is dispatch. We have shots fired at National City Savings and Loan. Hostages taken. Units are on site and SWAT units are twenty out. Reports of heavy weapons. Code 07-08-1947.”

_Date of the Roswell Crash._

“Fuck!” Maggie hollers into a quiet room.

She toggles her radio.

“Go for Zorro.”

“Zorro, we need you and Slick on site ASAP.”

“10-4, Dispatch. Sawyer, B-934112. Show me going.”

She lets go of the button.

“Green! Get your ass out here!”

Maggie reaches under her bulletproof vest to scratch a pesky itch back there that she won’t get to scratch for hours -- if she’s lucky -- but if she’s dead it won’t really matter. She’s had it ever since Alex touched up the back tattoo that she got while she was engaged to Kate. The sensation of Alex licking the blood off like some kind of Lesbian Vampire Elvis was worth all the pain and the embarrassment that she let an amateur tattoo her while she was smashed.

[Greetings, Maggie!]

“What the fucking hell?” Maggie whispers, whipping her head around like a grade-A lunatic.

[I am your artificial intelligence implant. Please cease sudden head movement and speaking without an audience. Humans read it as ‘crazy’.]

“This has to do with Alex’s offer to ‘touch up my ink’ when I was smashed last Thursday, right?” she whispers.

[Yes. You agreed. Playing recording.]

“Hells ya, babe! Whoo! Gimme that metal shit! Make me a robolezzie!”

[Shall I continue playback?]

“No. I was drunk.”

[Very well. I am initiating medical monitoring and streaming all my sensor data in real time to Alex’s implant.]

“Echo?”

[Yes. Hers is named Echo. Kara’s is named Kolex. The intelligence is shared with the robot.]

“Why are you activated?”

[A situation threatening to your physical safety arose. I was programmed by Kara Zor-El to prevent any lethal harm coming to the humans in her family. It is in my code as the “Cute but Fragile” protocol.]

_She thinks I’m family?_

Maggie feels a tap on the shoulder and narrowly avoids slugging Jack. Because he ducked.

“Whoa! Ready to roll?” he asks.

“Sorry. Twitchy. I fucking hate ray gun fights.”

“You and me both, woman.”

As they zip jackets marked ‘police’ over their bulletproof vests, applause rings throughout the bullpen. Most of those people have no fucking clue what this is other than the precinct captain doesn’t like these calls and these two go out when they come in.

_No reason to tell the other guys that these vests might as well be tissue paper to some of the weapons I’m seeing._

[Kara offers assistance but she will wait for your signal.]

“You drive, Jack.”

He opens the door on his side and Maggie just slings herself in the open window. Jack peels out, sirens blaring and speeds down the Crane Expressway towards the banking district.

[I am advised to inform you that four transmat beacons were placed in your jacket when Kara washed it for you. These can provide you with four sidearms, sent two at a time and keyed to your biometrics. The jacket itself was configured with an expandable internal lining of mil-spec infantry armor from Krypton. I can deploy it if desired but it weighs approximately fifty pounds.]

_Take some serious workouts to be able to move in that._

“Why would I want that?”

[Because criminals have rocket launchers and alien criminals have ray guns and rocket launchers. This stops both.]

“Do it as soon as I get out.”

“Who you talking to?” Jack demands.

“Fairy godmother’s little helper.”

“I’ve been a good boy,” Jack reminds her.

“Bullshit. But you’ve been good enough.”

[Reconfiguring one sidearm to either your or Jack’s biometrics. Agreed? Displaying weapon use summary and basic information.]

“Yes. Can you send that stuff now?”

[Thirty seconds.]

“Jack, put your sunglasses on and do not fucking crash this car.”

“Why? What’s the bi- _holyfuckingshit_!”

Maggie tugs her jacket open and looks at the navy blue bodysuit under it.

“Tell fairy godmother I like it. Police blue, markings, detective bars, badge number. Nice touch.”

“Your wearing a catsuit, Sawyer. Not your style.”

“Fuck you, Green. Be nice or fairy godmother won’t make you one.”

She checks the holsters sewn inside the leather and finds three identical pistols that weren’t there a moment ago. One has a larger grip.

_Must be Jack’s._

The fourth weapon is in her lap. It is a strange, a triangular-barreled gizmo with a series of hydraulic pistons at the back and spinning dynamos with blue LEDs running the length of the barrel. The stock and grip are hot to the touch but the barrel feels cold. Three different openings on the outside suggest that it actually chambers three rounds at once.

[What’s that?]

[Railgun based on a design stolen from a Lockheed Martin / LuthorCorp Dynamics project. Three chambers charged at any time, reload time one point one seconds. Be advised: it is not legal for non-DEO staff to possess and carry openly. Yours has been equipped with a cloaking system activated by the domino mask button on the top barrel.]

“So reload is longer than an old service revolver.”

[Correct. Vastly more powerful however. Mode 1 - Spread of flathead micro-rounds at variable velocity for semi-lethal knockdown up to breaching and demolition. Mode 2 - solid metallic for armor piercing and anti-vehicle. Mode 3 - Concussive shells filled with a medparticle anesthetic gas for crowd control. Select with the lever by the trigger. Additional ammo can be machined from scrap metal and kitchen chemicals with the kit Kara had delivered to your apartment.]

“Sexy!” Maggie purrs, turning her new toy over to get a better look at it.

“We’re here,” Jack tells her.

“For you, buddy.”

Maggie puts the larger pistol in his hand.

“I love it! It is a…” he prompts.

“Mother of all tasers, friend in the Seattle borrowed us half dozen from a truck headed to the test range. Long range, shoots straight, calculates voltage on the fly, no wires. Computerized as fuck. It won’t fire a lethal shot unless it detects someone sighting you with a firearm and can't stun them, so don’t bother trying any Rambo shit. Copy?”

“10-4, Shortcake.”

“And that?” he demands, pointing at the rifle.

“I’m _allowed_ to do Rambo shit.”

Maggie kicks the door open and sprints to the nearest cover. A white-faced young man is hunkered behind his shot-up patrol car. His shot-up and partially melted patrol car.

“You in charge?” she asks.

“Sarge is but he’s hit. Paramedics are seeing to him.”

“Detective Sawyer.”

“Guess you’re in charge, ma’am.”

[Facemask clipped to inside of jacket.]

Maggie reaches back, removes it and closes the two piece bubble of glass around her head. Something inside it projects her heartbeat and breathing along with the ammo remaining, names and ranks in blue for the nearest cops and red and green triangles for perps and hostages.

“Whoa! Amazing. Tiny little thing: fucks with my hair.”

[Verified. Design revision requested. Notifying fairy godmother...]

She turns back to the young patrolman.

“Kid, what’s your name?”

“Michaels.”

“Michaels, this is Jack Green. My partner. Stick to him like glue and you’re going home tonight. Promise.”

“Y-y-yes, ma’am.”

Maggie pats his shoulder.

“Everyone gets scared kid. Hold it in, do your job and lose your shit after is my advice.”

Michaels nods.

“Here goes fucking nothing. Alex, baby, I love you.”

[Relaying to Alex.]

_So the computer implant I didn’t agree to while sober isn’t that bad._

Maggie circles around to the other side of the car and slides across the hot metal of the hood. The instant she does, three blasts of puke-green something hit her, throwing her back. She takes a moment to get her bearings and sees herself sunk six inches into the concrete.

“Didn’t feel a goddamned thing. Tossed like a pinball but I didn’t get hurt.”

[Kinetic compensation is not possible at this scale. Suit is inert armor with no power source so it was formulated to solidify into a hard shell when struck with outside energy.]

[Targets at ten, one and four o’clock.]

Maggie hops back onto her feet.

“This is the National City Police Department. Drop your weapons and come out with your hands up. Do not, I repeat, do not attempt to escape.”

A hairless guy the size of three bodybuilders with a pig-like face and one red eye and one cyborg eye burst out the front of the bank, taking both doors of the hinges.

_K’Hund. I need to thank Kara for that Alien-opeida thing._

“I did warn you,” Maggie chuckles.

The arc-pistol jumps in her hand and lets out a long blue line of energy. Seven hundred and eighty pounds of alien thug crash to the pavement, cracking the decorative tiles as his inertia carries him forward. He skids to a stop right in front of her. Maggie steps onto the creature’s massive back and proceeds forwards, keeping to a low crouch.

“Throw down your weapons!” she bellows.

One by one, weird-as-shit alien rifles are tossed through windows and thrown over upturned vehicles or out from behind potted plants.

[Recommend use of three concussive rounds. Here, here, and here. I can load them with sedatives optimized for K’Hund biology. Human blood binds more strongly to oxygen, K’Hund blood more strongly carbon dioxide. So effects on humans will be minor.]

“It’s a plan…” Maggie stops. “Can I call you flannel?”

[I think Lady Kara would be surprised if you didn’t.]

“Do it, Flannel.”

Maggie holsters the pistol--feels badass slinging it around!--and draws the rifle. She toggles it to the right setting and two of the chambers kick out their shells. She reaches to the clips on the sides of the stock and grabs fresh ones with the right configuration. Some magnetic mumbo-jumbo grabs them from her hand and they _float_ into position.

She turns her eyes to look a blinking target inside her visor that reads ‘radio’.

“Go for dispatch.”

“This is Zorro. Suspects disarmed. We need three wagons--the big ones--and a full team from Science Division on site.”

“10-4, Zorro.”

The first shot kicks back hard and Maggie realizes she’s trusting Kara’s wizardry and those shock absorbers not to let the gun go right through and out the back of her ribcage. She lines up the second, fixes her footwork and tries again.

Better.

The third shot is easy. Gas wafts through the buildings and the thumps of K'Hund passing out can be heard.

“Hey!” she realizes. “I did get Alex something for our date.”

She nudges the lead thug with her boot.

“Ugly fucker though.”

 

* * *

### July 10, 2006  | Kara Danvers

National City, California

LuthorCorp West Offices  / L-Tech Solutions construction site

101st Floor, CEO, CFO and CTO offices

 

A small and sharp eyed Asian woman looks up the instant Kara steps off the elevator.  The stare follows the whole way to the waiting area chairs. Kara wonders for a moment if this lady has supersenses because she feels very judged right now.

Never has a person wearing a speckled gray skirt, librarian sweater and horn rimmed glasses been so intimidating.  

Finally she looks back to her screen but her eyes go back to Kara every few seconds.

“Jessica?”

“Yes,” the assistant replies.  “You?”

“Kara Danvers.”

The assistant flinches.

“I’m sorry, ma’am.  One of my duties is encouraging people to leave if they do not have appointments and those miss Luthor does not want to see.”

“Ah.  Hence the librarian eyes of doom?”

Jess’s lips twitch.

“Yes.”

“So...should I go?” Kara jokes.

“No.  She had me clear the schedule for you, which...for a moment I thought she was an impostor!  You should get in there the moment that door opens, comfort and support her. Oh, and take her lunch in with you.”

Kara looks at the Big Belly Burger bag on the table.

“Should I reheat it?”

“If you would be so kind, yes.”

“Consider it done.”

“You always feed your boss?  Miss Grant tends to remember to eat.”

Jess sighs.

“This must be strictly confidential, Ms. Zor-El.”

“Of course.”

“Miss Luthor is many things; brilliant, insightful, driven, moral, deeply ashamed of her family's actions.  She is not,” Jess sighs.

“Good at taking care of herself?” Kara suggests.

“Yes.”

Kara sighs, slouching in the chair and throwing her legs out halfway across the walkway.

“I noticed.  I’ll train her yet.”

Jess’ smile becomes positively wicked.

“Is that the only thing you’ll be training her on?  Because I have a list. Lena,” Jess pauses. “I’m oldest of six, two boys, four girls.  All three of sisters are doctors, lawyers, professors.  Crazy smart but genius and madness, you know? Keeping Lena from losing her mind feels...natural.”

“You’re a very good person, Jessica Haung.”

“Lena.  She…” Kara pauses.  “She’s amazing and gorgeous but most important I see someone in her that can understand someone in me.  And those someones both need someone to understand them or they’ll go bonkers and take her and me with them.”

Jess’ fingers lift from the keys and she sips from her water bottle.

“That was somehow the most vague and most accurate sentence I’ve heard all day.”

“Well, I can’t be pretty, wise and clear.  Pobody’s nerfect.”

“Too true.”

A sound catches Kara’s ears.  Lena’s voice but it’s an enraged, pained snarl.  The sound an injured cat makes when cornered by a sadistic child.

“I said no.  Get out, mother.”

“This is my company, foster daughter.”

_Ouch.  Foster has never sounded so awful._

“Lex signed it over to me.  Every last patent. Every last brick.  Call it a parting gift to the only person he loved about who loved him back.”

“We’ll see.”

“Will we?  What crime has Lex committed to make a signed, notarized and witnessed filing in the State of California invalid?  You do hire such clever attorneys for him, after all.”

Lillian makes some quiet, frustrated sounds while trying and failing to cook up a comeback.

“Is Lillian someone Lena wanted to see?” Kara asks.

Jess shakes her head.

“All I needed.  Hang on to the burgers.  I don’t want to get them mashed.”

Kara hops up, rolls up her sleeves and puts her hands on the office doors.

“What are yo-”

She throws them open.

“Oh my god,” Jess chortles behind Kara.

Lena is staring down a middle aged woman with mostly grayed blonde hair and a face full of tiny, well hidden lines.  The look in Lena’s eyes proves that some awful mistreatment of her daughter exists for each laugh line and crow’s foot.

“She bothering you?” Kara asks.

Lena nods quickly, shaking two tears loose.

“We are doing business.  Business which is none of your concern, filth.”

“It is my duty to expel you from her house if you are here uninvited and causing my _shak’utan_ such anguish.”

_< "Soul’s light" | Ajatkar | ancient language common in the Juru Valley since tribal era of "War Queens" and among traditionalist members of House Ina-Zenn.>_

“Lovely language, Kara,” Lena chortles.  “Hard. Assertive. A bit of an Arabic feel.  What is it?”

Kara shrugs. “It’s...Kryptonian.”  Kara watches Lillian’s face go still and her eyes twitch up a tiny fraction of a degree.

_Good fucking luck translating that.  You and your wonderboy may have learned enough to embarrass yourself giving a villain's monologue in Kryptohavli but the old colony probes only contained message discs in standard.  I got five more local flavors where that came from._

“Ready for our date, _gra mo chroi_?” < "Love of my heart" | Galiege | Ireland>

“As soon as security gets here.”

“No need,” Kara grins.

“Get your hands off me!”  Lillian shrieks.

“My hands aren’t on you yet, you twisted, child beating bitch.  But when they are, you’ll know it.”

Lillian flinches when she realizes she panicked before Kara moved.  She reaches for something in her pocket and Kara levels her white-hot index finger at Lillian’s shoulder joint.  

“Put it down or I burn off whichever arm you used to beat Lena with.”

“Both,” Lena whispers.  At some point she stepped behind Kara and hid her face in the back of Kara’s shirt.  

“She liked to keep things symmetrical.”

“Both arms it is.”

Lillian’s fingers stop moving in her suit jacket but her mask remains.  She’s not afraid or not any more afraid than she was before.

“People who beat children violate the laws of nature,” Kara snarls.  

“Evolution is the universal constant of living things! Parent nurtures child, over and over into eternity. Lena is your child!” she bellows.

Kara puts her face close enough that Lillian can feel the spittle from her rant.

“There are planets where you would be hung up five rotations on a shock cord for striking your children’s skin.  Either you pass out from the voltage and wake up in jail or you make it five days and they cut you down and hose your own filth off you.  I would happily sit there with a jumbo popcorn, Lillian. Just to watch you writhe.”

“Those planets have very few childhood trauma counselors,” Kara swoons.  “And the kids get good grades. Smart kids are precious to them. You have smart kids!  You’d love it! I could drop you on one of them before sundown.”

“Sixty two light years to Jylani VI.  Religious commune. Lena’s word and a single scar would be enough,” Kara glances at her watch. “Have you there by four thirty.  Just hold your breath.”

“You’re bluffing.  Not even Kal could do that.  When’s the funeral, by the way?”

Kara’s breathing is reduced to a growl.

“He can’t but I can.  My father was my planet’s answer to Lex Luthor--except he had some ethical discipline--and he wanted to make certain his baby girl could handle herself.”

“Torturing those convicted of no crimes?” Lillian tsk-tsks.  “You’re a monster and you just admitted it to the world.”

The upper-right part of her glasses is covered in some reflective material.  

“Camera lens, huh?”

Ferocity’s rage is simmering in her mind, bringing her closer and closer to not caring about greasing that lens with Lillian’s guts.

“I’m not a monster, Lillian.  I am many things. The last of my mother’s line.  I am my cousin’s only blood kin. I am a sister, daughter, aunt...and I am a cousin.  Even now. He may be miffed at you when he wakes up…”

“And since I’ve been caring for my nieces--gorgeous, kind, smart little girls--while their father fights for his life.  So I will not give a flying fuck about stopping him if he goes after you.”

Kara leans in close to the camera.

“Retire from evil in the next few years, Lillian...before those girl’s powers finish developing. If you don’t, I will hunt you down.  Fight you standing shoulder to shoulder with them and Kal...four on one.  Make stopping you a family affair.” Kara breathes.

Lillian’s whispered ‘fuck’ would be inaudible to most but her camera must have caught it.

“The reason I don’t like you is that I am the sole survivor of a city, a people, a planet who were destroyed by short-sighted egotists like yourself who only cared about profit and their pride.  A few hundred people like you killed thirty billion despite repeated warnings.”

“You have no idea the enemy you made when you hurt her!” Kara shouts, pointing at Lena.

“Kal’s muscles may be bigger but if you think I’m weaker, you’re wrong. I have training he does not.  I am less gentle with criminals than he is. I learned our sacred texts and our first principles while at the breast of the greatest legal mind of her generation.  I am the beloved niece of the most decorated combat commander Krypton had seen in eleven thousand years and _she_ taught me to fight.  I was trained as a scientist by a team of the best minds in Argo City, the capital of the Kryptonian Republic.”

“And…”

Kara spins around, pulling Lena’s lips to hers and burying Lena in her arms.  Lena whimpers and whines and puts her fluttering fingers around Kara’s biceps.  Kara turns her head to speak over her shoulder at Lillian, leaving a wide-eyed and bruise-lipped Lena gasping for breath.

“...and I love that woman so much I will make her whole and undo the awful things you did to her.  Which means peace with, here and now. It means spilling no blood in her house. I will gladly slit your throat anon.”

[Kolex, can you fudge the nastiest bits?]

[Death threats now...unclear.]

Lillian’s outline starts to glow, brighter and brighter.  Kara lunges and then thinks better of it. The grafts can probably save her from getting her bits and Lillian’s mixed -- she’s far denser -- but she’d prefer not to get splinched.

_Fuck.  How did she get transmat?_

[Kolex?  Conjecture.]

[The scout ship discovered in Antarctica six years ago.  All transmat beacons in the inventory were present at last check.  But one could have been lifted before the Army took inventory. Transit speed was slow.  The system is low on power and most likely lacks a hub.]

“She got everything she wanted, like always.” Lena sighs.

“She got bits and pieces.  She didn’t deny beating you, which won’t help her image.”

“You threatened her, Kara.  If you don’t think she can have that all over the internet by the end of the day, you’re naive.  Beautiful, but naive.”

“Kolex, replay the footage.”

Lena watches intently.  Kara’s wisecrack about the popcorn is noise, as is her threat to slit Lillian’s throat.  A layer of static permeates to make the futzes believable.

“You...hacked her camera?”

“Miniaturized devices tend to have weaker security.  She could get in front of the cameras and say otherwise but my street cred is higher.”

“Slit her throat anon?  Was that a _Shakespeare in Love_ reference?” Lena snickers.

“Hey!  It had crossdressing Gwyneth Paltrow.  Super gay. Wait here, babe.”

“Was pretty gay,” Lena reminds herself as Kara goes back to Jess.

Kara returns with the Big Belly Burger, unwraps one and offers it in her cupped hands.  It slowly heats up until it is steaming and the meat is pleasantly sizzling.

“Someone missed her lunch.”

“Someone,” Lena scoffed.  “Was rudely interrupted by her personal Satan.”

“Go on.”

“What...just out of your hand?”

“Why wouldn’t I want you eating out of the palm of my hand?”

Lena eats the burger with only her mouth, slowly and agonizingly, and then plucks the french fries out of Kara’s hands one by one before licking the salt off.

“Should we christen your couch?” Kara asks.  “Or would you prefer the desk?”

“Trying to be a respectable businesswoman here,” Lena complains.  “Shower at my place.”

  


They flopped down onto this couch hours ago and they haven’t said five words since.  Kara cannot believe how wonderful it is just holding Lena.

“I’m sorry I ruined our date, Kara.”

“No such thing.  You’re here.”

“Weren’t those tickets expensive?  And how do you have so much money on a intern’s salary?”

“I own a powerful computer and there’s cryptocurrency markets.”

Lena snorts.

“Cheater.”

“Oh?  Being born into a hundred twenty billion wasn’t?”

“Point,” Lena admits.

“Do you have that change of clothes on you?” Kara asks.

“Office closet.  Why?”

“I had tickets for each show.  Today, tomorrow, the whole run.  I had Alex take ours.”

“How?”

“I hired the band.  Rather, I tipped off the band that Earth had gone through first contact.  Thessalian punk group. Imagine Joan Jett as backup singer. Bonnie Tyler on drums and a lesbian alien version of Tom Jones doing lead vocals.  Black holes for snare drums and twelve hundred years of trashed hotel rooms and passed-out groupies.”

“Wow.  How many member changes?”

“One.  Settled down with a couple of her groupies.  A small harem. Desert moon, underground mansion.  No one wears pants. Nice place.”

Lena hoists herself off the couch...on the third try.

“Looked difficult.”

“I’m tired, Kara. It happens to us flawed beings. To us sweaty, ugly, imperfect mortals. If you want something el-”

“Get back here,” Kara sighs, speeding forward and pulling Lena into her lap.

“I will never mock you. I want you to try and understand that. If I criticize you--ever--it will be from love and hope we can both improve and you’ll know it. I was joking because I hoped you might laugh. I won't tease you until I’ve loved you enough and gotten you enough help for you to enjoy it.”

“Hair smells amazing,” Kara adds.

“Peppermint oil.”

“Mmm.”

Kara slides her hand under Lena’s skirt at the waist. Lena tilts her head back and latches her teeth on a pulse point.

“The other night, did my skin detect...mayhaps...a woman just as the universe made her?”

Sure enough, Kara’s fingers are sliding through a field of wet velvet right now. Finding Lena’s warm cleft, Kara hooks her fingertip back and keeps her palm down. Faint pressure against Lena’s mound as her finger traces lazy curlicues against her lover’s inner walls. Pressing the hidden treasure of the clit from both sides...

“Cinnamon oil for that,” Lena chokes. “And entirely too much time.”

“Presentation is an important part of fine dining,” Kara muses.

“And these?

Kara’s free hand slides up the sleeve of Lena’s ribcage.

“Marvelous. Fluffy as the rest of it. Makes tickling all the more fun.”

“Why do you think I never have been seen in a s-sl-sle-sleeveless dress?” Lena gasps.  She is having real trouble not laughing. ”Shaving my legs is en-enough,” she stutters.

_She’s short of breath, better take it easy and let her recover._

“Being a hairy lesbian was a rebellion I could have and Lillian would never know.  Is it okay if I don’t shave them?”

Kara laughs.

“I’m pretty sure there is recent--current, in fact--evidence that I find you sexy.”

Kara curls her fingers inside Lena--finding some new marvel of slickness and heat and woman--and Lena’s heels stab a the floor and both her hands clench on Kara’s free hand.

“And here I thought only those of us who need a plasma torch for a trim were that bold.”

“Kara!” Lena hisses, arching her back up towards the ceiling.

“Did…” Kara marvels.  “Did you just come from talking about  _toolchain engineering_?”

“Your finger helped,” Lena gulps.  “And I like smart women.”

“Would you rather stay in?” Kara offers.

“Yes.  Sorry I’m not more fu-”

“No sorrying.  I offered. Boop.”  

She taps Lena’s nose just to make those enchanted eyes narrow in irritation.

“So we can sit here and rest.  If you like, we can do the ice cream part.  It’s an all night place.”

“Which one?”

“Elysian Creamery.  I got hooked as a kid.”

“Vegan?” Lena asks.

“Two thirds of the menu can be.  Didn’t you just...”

“Yes.  From a cow a service selected from a fair-trade, free range ranch and provided by a service that makes sure only that meat is in any order I place.  I drive electric to counter the carbon.”

“Some supervillian you are.”

Lena laughs.

“Always was a disappointment.”

“You were close to Lex, weren’t you?”

“Still am, I guess.  Or would like to be. I know how that must sound.”

“He’s part of you, Lena.  Just like my dad is part of me.  When I was bragging to Lillian, I was giving my dad too much credit.  Repeated ethical censures. He almost got his license yanked twice. It’s why the university was putting so much into my training, getting ready to take me as a tenured fellow at fifteen.  To get him off the stationary but keep our name. By the end it was all black projects for the military...some pretty nasty. Like the surgery he put me through.”

“Which is why you can do things Kal-El can’t?”

“Exactly.  So smart! Boop.”  Kara taps the tip of that milky nose one more time.

“Stop that.”

“I will not!  You’re too cute.  It makes you smile in a way you can’t stop.  You don’t have to smile Lena. But if you feel like it, make sure to smile.”

“Give me some time to detox from the stress and we can go out.  What time is it?”

“Late.  Somewhere in the fuck-it-I’m-cuddling-Lena part of the night.  When you’re ready, I have something for you.”

“Oh?”

“A gift.  Emotional gift.  My sister talked me out of giving either Virago or Sappho’s Jewels.  On the second date.”

“I’m sorry,” Lena laughs.  “What?”

“The two nearest star systems I own.  I prefer Sappho’s Jewels. Triple white dwarf system.  One planet has a jungle moon with no intelligent life, a rainy climate and dawn so bright that it lights up the leaves like an angel in a painting.  I had the astronomy union reserve those names when the telescopes find them. They now have the telescopes to do it so I expect obedience.”

“You were going to give me star systems?”

“And transportation, supplies and seed crops and building materials...”

“What if I do go supervillian?

Kara shrugs.

“Easy.  Then I give that trophy wife slash sub thing a try.”

“You’re terrible,” Lena complains.

Kara has freed one hand far enough to reach the file folder.

“But I know you won’t.  Which ruins all my potential leashed-to-your desk kinks.”

“How do you know?  I may not be her daughter but I am Lionel’s son.”

“My darling, you are so much more,” Kara purrs.

She pulls the files out and cracks the airmail wax on the envelope.

“Ashford, Ireland?” Lena wonders.  “Are these?”

“Adoption papers, mothers last address, the photos that neighbors could find in a hurry.”

“I love you,” Lena sniffles.  “No one does things like this for me.  They never have.”

“I found out why you were so hell-bent on doing the right thing and informing on your mother.  It’s in your blood, Lena.”

“Lena Margaret Luthor...meet Lena Ciara Connelly, your name at birth.  The real you. this is your great-great-grandmother’s gravestone.”

Lena all but leaps off Kara’s lap.  

“This is…” Lena gasps.  “Glasnevin Cemetery.”

“Yes.  Resting place of patriots, holy men, malcontents and soiled doves from the laundries.  That’s me laying a wreath at the grave of Constance Markievicz, suffragette, revolutionary, noblewoman, politician...your ancestor.”

“That’s impossible,” Lena sniffles.  “I would have found that.”

“Constance’s daughter Maeve,” Kara explains, changing to some newspaper clippings.  

“Maeve....was a bit of a cougar.  Had a roll with a some young dandy in Dublin in 1940.  Twins, boy and girl. The Fitzgraces after Maeve's sister's family.  Turns out the female twin was a player like her mom. She had a kid in 1961.  Helen. The result of Helen was…you.”

Kara slides the last picture out: Polaroid of a woman in a simple gray dress with a curtain of black ringlets pulled up, cradling an infant girl.  Helen's green eyes blaze across decades, oceans and fading of old ink. They’re standing in front of a simple cottage with robin’s egg blue window shutters and a shabby garden wall that ends at the banks of a small river.

"When she was nineteen, she was a temp working for Dublin Clerical Services which did business wit-”

“LuthorCorp Europe in Dublin,” Lena whispers.  “This is her. Kara, this is her. How?”

Kara blushes.  “Spent every moment I could on it since the morning after we met. I...begged some nuns and, well, maybe I helped them clean out some abusive priests.”

“You beat up a priest to get this?”

Kara holds up four fingers.

“Oh my god,” Lena snickers.  “Four? So you’re the evil one!”

“Lena.  If you ever, for any reason doubt that you’re good...if you ever wonder why every cell in your body screams to do the right thing...it’s because you were born to a chain of headstrong women.  Women who did just that.”

“Freedom fighters, love children, bastards, activists, troublemakers.  Mother to daughter to daughter, to daughter...to you. Constance was like you, Lena.  Just less stylish. A rich woman who could have had it easy but she believed in things.  So she put her life on the line. Put on men’s clothing, took a rifle to a city park and held it for six days against the British army.”

“That’s why you do what’s right even when it’s scary.  Because it is in your blood. You were born to people who risked everything for what was right.”

“The cottage, Lena?”

“Yes?”

“It’s still there.  I visited it. Someday I want to hold your children on those front steps.  Have it simple. Wife, kids...maybe a pet.”

Lena turns over to straddle Kara and just look into her eyes. Neither Kara nor Lena find more words until after dawn. Only kisses and fingertips on faces pass between them.

  


* * *

**July 10, 2006  | Alex Danvers**

DEO Forward Operating Base, West Coast, Site Three (Codenamed “Gold Nugget 3”)

Firing Range

 

The stock of the SCAR nestles comfortably into Alex’s shoulder.  Holographic targets pop up.

 _Human mercs_.  She flicks it back to semi automatic.  Six rounds, four center mass hits and one headshot.  The holographs vanish.

 _K’Hund._ Her right hand aches for the arc pistol but this exercise is doing it old school.  

She lines up on the cybernetic eye and fires four times, forcing the sights down against the recoil.  The computer agrees that the last two rounds went out the back of the implant into the brain. She leaps to the side before the hologram can ‘hit her’ with its remaining forward motion.

Something comes at her out of nowhere with a blizzard of dripping stingers and spiny jaws spread wide.  Alex rolls sideways and swings the rifle like it’s a baseball bat. She wedges the body of the gun between the jaws, draws her knife and slashes out the nearest two eyes.  The beast bellows in pain and rounds on her, swinging with four arms and eight stingers. She slides under it--a stinger snagging her shoulder--and puts the knife in a weak joint in the carapace, hooking it in and yanking back hard.

Fatty brown sludge sprays from the wound and the surprise attack is over.

“Danvers!” Vasquez bellows.

“You good?”

“Of cour-” Alex begins.

She looks over to the body beside her and shakes real, reeking, steaming Helgrammite ichor off her hands.

“Fuck!  That one was real?”

Vasquez approaches the still twitching Helgrammite, levels her railgun at the wound and sets it to spread-fire.  She puts one blast into the torso, one into the head and one into the abdomen.

“Not my favorite thing,” Vasquez sighs.  “Having to kill them.”

“You didn’t notice the smell?” she asks.  “Ugh. They smell nice when they’re not bleeding.”

She rips open her medkit and offers Alex an antivenom hypo.

“Kind of in the zone,” Alex admits.

She shoves the hypo into the artery nearest the wound and shoots it all in.

“I’ll say.  Look on the bright side, Danvers.  Now we’ve both gotten a hand to hand kill on one of those,” Vasquez teases.

“What happened?”

“Prisoner broke out of the police van they were bringing him in.”

“Shit.  Were there any casualties?”

“Cops got some claw swipes...one of them was smart and took an arc pistol shot.  Kept their heads down. One of our guys got thrown into a girder. Doc wants you to check with Blue Angel before she operates.  His spine is cracked and he is fine now but…”

“But make sure we have all possible tools before cutting.  Will do.”

Vasquez holds out her hand.

“Get off your ass, Danvers.  Got some K’Hund gangbangers coming in.  You’ve had better luck appealing to ‘their sense of honor’.”  Vasquez puffs her chest out and looks down her nose when she says ‘honor’.

“Gang members?  That’s...not good.”

Vasquez nods.  “National City PD has been chasing a rumor that humans are providing alien weapons to alien and human criminals.”

“That’s got to be more CADMUS bullshit,” Alex sighs.  “Turn the public opinion.”

“That sounds like them.  Smoking hot little Latin number wants to do the handoff.”

The idea of seeing Maggie--even here, where the closet door must be closed tight--is exhilarating.  Alex brushes her bodysuit to get the clumps of dust off and follows Vasquez.

Maggie is leaning against an NCPD van while one of the DEO medics.  

 _Crystal,_ Alex thinks, _From Dallas.  Put her on medic duty until she stops creaming her panties when she looks at the guns.  If she fucks up that wound treatment, I’ll give her a year of sentry duty at the Alaska station._

A million years of human instinct scream at Alex.

Run to your mate!  She’s hurt! Be sure she’s safe!  Comfort her! Claim her as yours!

Training and regulation fight back and they’re not going to win. Not for long.

“‘Tis only a flesh wound,” Maggie cracks.

“Someone,” Maggie snarls, turning to face a group of Vegas PD guys in SWAT gear.  “Clearly didn’t read the guidelines on non-human restraints.”

Six guys in body armor with submachine guns wince and shuffle because Maggie is right and their stupidity could have killed everyone here.

“Whoa there, Sawyer.  Easy on the death eyes.  I think my dick just shriveled,” Alex jokes.  

“What happened to the prisoner?” Maggie asks.

Alex nods.  “Attacked me when I was unarmed.  I had to kill it.”

When she hears that and looks at Alex’s bandage, Maggie’s brown eyes change.  An murderous look that’s comforting and sexy as hell and much too gay for the situation.  Maggie is more than willing to claim her mate, it would seem.

“I’m fine, thanks for asking.” Alex jokes.

“You guys,” she tells the Vegas cops.  “Will need to get me in touch with your higher-ups.  We’re legit. So we do a deposition and an inquiry after a kill, same as any of you.”

“Who cares?” one whines.  “It’s dead.”

“ _He_ is dead and it’s because he broke loose from your van while mentally unstable.  I’m the one that had to kill him and I’m the one who will have to explain that to his relatives after I’m the one stuck trying to find them.”

“Which is why I’m so pissed off!”

“I’m not signing anything until the proper steps are taken. So unless you help me, the story is that the perp disappeared from your van and ended up dead in a ditch outside Vegas with some nine-millimeter slugs consistent with your service weapon. I’m fine if the whole thing gets pinned on you. It was your fuck-up that got him killed.”

“Shut your mouth, Peretti.  Of course, ma’am. Will do,” one of the men assures Alex.

_Took them long enough to figure out who was the man in charge._

“If I hadn’t had the new kit,” Maggie growls. “You idiots would all be dead.  Zinged it. Hope I slowed it--him, apparently--down for you?”

Alex shrugs.  “Wasn’t thinking straight, that’s for sure.”

Maggie fondly pats an arc pistol holstered on her thigh.  

No, Alex realizes.   _Not an arc pistol.  Just looks like one._

Looking closer, recognizes a _Talaq’s Claw_ sidearm like the one Kara made for herself and Alex.  Kryptonian infantry pistol--hand cannon, more like--with a filter crystal slotted on the end of the barrel to make it behave like an arc.  Forged in navy blue alloy with the NCPD seal and Maggie’s badge number stenciled on the barrel.

_Kara must really want to be a sister-in-law._

“All right, now that that dumbfuckery is handled...what do National City’s finest bring me?”

“K’Hund gangbangers.  Call themselves The Rhinos.  Packing these spiny-looking black rifles that shot green…” Maggie shrugs.  “Shot beams of green fuck only knows at us. Melted half a cruiser. Our science guys kept two for tear-down.  Rest are in a crate.

“Sucks to be them,” Maggie sirks.  “They brought ray guns to a me fight.  All alive and still nice and dopey with knockout gas.“

“Call it an early present for Yom Kippur,” Maggie jokes.  “That a thing?”

Maggies dimples say it’s a joke but her eye contact tells Alex she genuinely wants to know.

“No,” Alex chuckles.  “Wardrobe changes, unplugging, no sex.  Fasting. Then food the next day. Of course food...there’s always food.  Prayer, repentance and forgiving others. Temple.”

“Soooo…” Maggie muses.  “One day of Lent but with even frumpier clothes, even less sex and then mandatory church and confessional?”

Alex wobbles her hand back and forth.  “Eh. You’re not right and you’re not all wrong either...”

“Sounds like high-speed Catholicism,” she jokes.  

 _Come with, me, please._  Alex prays. _Let me show you Midvale.  Let me show you to Larry Engels and have him tut-tut and say I finally got my head out of my ass and found a good one.  Let aunt Sarah tell you to stand up straight and make a wisecrack about your hips. Let break the fast with you and have Kara distract Eliza so I can follow it up with soaking the sheets of my childhood bed._

“Huh.  I should probably learn more about it.  Maybe grab a brochure from Steinman.”

_Damn, she’s good.  She just offered to come with me without even acting like she was talking to me._

Vasquez comes up behind Alex and hisses in her ear.

“Danvers, the instant she smiled at you, you pulled the pin.  If you do not toss that grenade and get to cover, you are going to go up in a blast of rainbows and pink triangles,” she warns.

Alex leans into her shoulder radio and flicks it on.

“Jailer, take them to interrogation four and get HQ to dispatch transport to Anvil.”

Maggie flashes one more blast of dimples, turns on her heel and climbs back into the NCPD prisoner van.

“Stay classy, Danvers!” she hollers.

“Don’t get dead, Sawyer!”

[We still on, baby?]

[Echo...is that?]

[Yes.  Maggie's implant has fired up.  It is referring to itself as Flannel.  That was a direct relay of Maggie’s message.]

[Flannel?  Sounds like they bonded quick...]

[Tell her that I wouldn’t miss it for anything.]

Alex is glad it’s not Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Grin Like a Crazy Person because she spends the rest of the day doing that last one.

 

* * *

 

###  **July 11, 2006  | Kara Danvers**

National City, California 

LuthorCorp West Offices  / L-Tech Solutions construction site 

101st Floor, CEO, CFO and CTO offices 

 

“Hey,” someone Kara can’t see whispers.  “Wake up, new blood.”

Kara cracks one eye open.  It’s morning now, which is perfect.  Lena slept on Kara’s lap all night so she won’t be sore and Kara got Lena all night which is...amazing.  

Lena makes a whining noise and snuggles closer but doesn’t wake.

In front of Kara stands a tall woman with coppery-brown skin, midnight eyes and plump lips like chocolate dipped orange slices.  The silk blouse and charcoal pantsuit she wears must have been custom made because she clearly was. Everything about her is a display of power--lazy, confident, bored--from the slow motions of her slender limbs to the cocksure smirk of her lips to the tilt of her head.  Looks like a supermodel tied a tiger to the bed, fucked it to a paste and Sam is the resulting lovechild: lithe and languid and yet intense at the same time.  All the lazy posture and careless slouching is made up for by an intense gaze and the mind behind it.

She’s got at least two inches on Kara and those heels are modest, nothing like the stilts Lena was wearing.

“M’Kara.” she yawns.

“Sam Arias.”

“Sam, huh?”

“Problem with that?”

Kara laughs.

“No. Look where my hand is.”

Sam’s eyes follow Kara’s hand as far as they can -- to where it sinks below Lena’s skirt -- her cheeks darken and those dark lips curl upwards.

“A masculine nickname is no problem, Sam.”

Sam chews on her lips.  Kara is jealous of those incisors.

_Why am I this thirsty?  I literally have a bird in hand right now.  Got the bird’s feathers in hand at any rate._

_It’s Sam,_ Kara realizes.   _Something unusual about her._

The floor is no longer flat; it slants towards Sam now and gravity seems messed up too.  Like Kara is having to fight to stay down. To not leave Lena and end up in Sam’s arms.

_No.  I want to go to her and take Lena with me   Have to talk about this when Lena wakes up._

“You’re…” Kara yawns, probably sounding like a moron and a half.  “You’re Lena’s college buddy, right? The badass who worked her way through the Ivy League with a toddler?”

“Grad school buddy.  Ex, too. Her only ex.  Because I think she gave up.  We bonded over being adopted and having awful mothers...hers is present, mine is not.”

“After we ended it, she somehow thought she deserved nothing.  Wasn’t my view. Hell, I still wanted to be with her. Daydream about it.  Even now.”

“I think...” Sam sighs.  

“I think she is so afraid of herself and her family’s mental health history that she took all her dreams of family and put them into Ruby.  When we didn’t work out, Lena decided that all doors were closed and she was too hideous to be a mother.”

“Lillian,” Kara snarls.

“Lillian certainly is that bitch.  I saw your video takedown on my phones ‘recommended’ page.  Damn. You broke the ice-queen’s face! She was trying so hard not to look scared!  When you dipped Lee for that kiss...Lillians face! I spat coffee. Looked like she clenched so hard she made a diamond.”

“Back to good things,” Kara grumbles.  “Ruby?”

“My daughter.  She’s nine.”

“How?  I mean, besides the obvious.”

“Got knocked up at a mixer with Harvard folks in undergrad.  Took the boy and not the girl. Felt like a moron for about the first trimester,” Sam recalls.

“Now…” she sighs.  “Wouldn’t trade the little brat for anything.  At least it was a scholarship boy so Rubes got smart genes rather than rich asshat genes.”

Kara smiles.

"Your ovaries have good taste."

“They really do,” Sam agrees.  “Even if we’ve kind of got an love-hate thing going.  Abusive relationship. Dumb and Dumber down there can't seem to keep it in their pants.”

"Ovocytes," Kara corrects her. “Not pants.  That’s…” she yawns. “What eggs pop out of. Feel like I need a nap after all that sleep.”

"A hot scientist type, eh?  Is this casual?” Sam asks.

“Oh, no.  My people…” Kara sighs.  “There’s marriage or paring for life and there’s the Comfort Guild.  Unless there’s a red light, silk drapes and coins in the dish...it’s forever.”

“Your people?” Sam begins.  “Oh. My. God. You’re her!”

Sam proceeds to do a little happy dance around the office that would no doubt embarrass her daughter into a coma.

“Shh. Shush. Stop!” Kara demands.  “Sleeping beauty.”

“Fine.” Sam grumps.  

“Rubes is going to explode.  She’s a big fan. The only thing I spoiled her with when I got this job was Superwoman everything.”

“Fan?” Kara mumbles.  “I have fans?”

Sam looks at Kara, shakes her head and says nothing.

Lena shifts again, silken and untamed hair going everywhere including down the collar of Kara’s shirt which is almost enough to make Kara throw Sam out of the room.

“How is she?” Sam asks.

“Bad.  Lillian was cutting her open when I barged in.  I…” Kara sighs.

She nods at the table where the neatly-stacked research on Lena’s family is.

“I dig up some hints about what the real Lena is.  What’s under all that doubt Lillian burned in.”

Sam tiptoes through the pages.

“Wow.  I tried, when we were together.  But...guess it was a job for Superwoman.”

“I should probably get back to paying for all this,” Sam sighs.  “I’m the CFO.”

“The what now?”

“Chief Financial Officer.”

“Oh.  Sounds like an important job.”

“It’s funny.  I mean, back home, my family was rich.  Ridiculously so but...there was a bottom to the system and that bottom was still enough.  People got food, shelter, access to training. Universal basic income, I guess it’s called here.”

“So...this whole thing,” Kara motions at the spartan decor which no doubt cost four times more than Eliza’s whole house.  “Kind of freaks me out. I keep looking for a public information kiosk or transit pod or a meal delivery canister because my brain tells me that immense wealth means that somewhere nearby is public assistance.”

“Communist,” Sam scoffs.  “But...L-Corp is going to be better than most companies that way.  Anyway...I have a really good job. Yay favoritism!”

“Yay insanely qualified woman,” Lena corrects.  “Who would have been first in the pool even if I never met you.  There’s no one else I could trust to do this with me.”

“How long were you awake?”

Lena kisses Kara’s neck because she’d have to move to get her face.

“Most of it.  Hi, Sammy.”

“Hi, Lee.  Sleep well?  So all these years, the secret was not the weighted blankets or the security light--just call it a night light--it was security fisting?” she teases.

Lena’s cheeks go redder than her lipstick.

“Please move your hand, Kara.” she groans.

“Sam, Lena...I want it noted that I disagree vehemently with this plan.”

“Noted.”  “So do I.”  Sam and Lena reply so quickly that Kara’s not sure who said which.  Both of them are snickering--naturally--like old friends who laugh at each others joke when they so much as think them.  

So no clues there.

Kara complies, slower than she needs to.  Lena’s hips jerk and her eyes glaze over each time a knuckle slides out.  Kara’s sodden, well warmed hand shivers now that it’s back in open air.

“No sense wasting it,” Kara decides, sucking her fingers clean one by one.

“That does it!” Sam exclaims, throwing her hands up.  “Either I get a pity fuck or you two leave.”

“She _is_ your best friend, Lena.”

“What happened to ‘pairing for life’?”

“We do!  Once we make a promise like that, we keep it.  We stay coupled. But if my summers in Kansas taught me anything, a ‘couple’ ranges from two to four.”

Sam is guffawing into her hand.

“You’re going to kill her, Kara.  Stop. She’s going to have like...a blood clot from blushing.”

“No pity fucks,” Lena insists.

“Date night, take two it is.”

“What?  Kara, no.  I have stuff to do.”

Sam slides her fingers into a pocket and gets her cell phone.  It seems small in her hands.

“Why doesn’t she use a big people phone?” Kara hisses.

“Look again,” Lena replies.

 _Oh,_ Kara thinks.   _Sam just has hands long as she is._

“Whoa.”

“Exactly,” Lena jokes.  “Tall dark and handsome, every part of her.”

Sam makes a kissy face.

“Hi,” she tells the person on the other end.  “This is Sam Arias, L-Tech.”

“No, no, not LuthorCorp...yes, I’m sure.  Fix your files! We already fixed the side of the building.  Do you want this contract or not? CEO’s office. Today, tomorrow...let’s see.  Yours until Tuesday. All yours if you can get here in,” Sam turns her wrist to check her smartwatch.

“Two hours.  As long as we get the discount for filling your scheduling gap.  Total? Uh-huh. Sounds good. We’ll take it. Bye.”

She jabs her finger at Lena.

“You are not allowed in your office for the next five days.  If I can’t force you to take a vacation, I’ll have National City Department of Building and Safety do it.”

“And you,” Sam declares, pointing at Kara.  “Take care of her. Make her want to take vacations in the future so I don’t have to like...start a nuclear meltdown to get my best friend to go home.”

Sam stops on her way out, looking back at them.

“And Kara, thank you.  Thank you for making her feel things again.”

 

 

“These are everywhere,” Lena chuckles, looking down at her phone.  “Wait… 4,000 locations in ‘Man’s World’ alone? What kind of slogan is that?”

“Amazonian, obviously.”

“Right,” Lena scoffs.  “Wonder Woman is...womaning all four thousand shops?”

“Says right on the front page that she’s Chairwoman and it all goes to her charity.  The boss sets the tone.”

Kara pushes the door open and the bell dings merrily.

“After you, Otis.”

He lumbers in, managing to not push on the pull door.  Which is a start.

“A word, Mercy?” Kara asks.

Mercy looks at Lena and she nods.

“Otis seem less...loud and clanky than usual?”

Mercy gives Otis exactly the sort of look Kara had hoped for...focused, suspicious, cold.  Like a knife chipped out of obsidian.

“He is harder to notice, yeah.  Which is Otis not being Otis, for some reason  Thanks, Kara.”

“We all want her safe.”

Mercy follows Lena, rubbing her fingers curiously on the ‘safe place’ sticker.

“No such thing,” Mercy sighs.  “Not completely. Just varying degrees of danger.”

Kara tsk-tsks.

“One, you need a more positive outlook.  Two, that indicates a place that will take in abused kids and domestic violence victims.”

“Oh,” Mercy mutters.  “And that works? What stops the abuser?”

Kara shrugs.

“Ooh!  Fun fact:  not one dollar has ever been stolen from these shops.  Only retail place in America can claim that. So...they’re doing something right safety wise.”

Kara sidles up to the counter, eyes darting across 24 kinds of delicious, sugar-and-fat laced paradise.  Elysian Creamery has one flavor slot for every titan and god of Greek myth. Currently no fewer than three flavors are ‘Artemis’ something which is pretty chill.  Last month it was five.

The clerk is a short, broad-shouldered brick of a woman with a rosy, round face. She wears a logo-ed hoodie for the freezer in back.  Even with the hoodie, her outline shows both a generosity of curves and muscle. She looks like she eats here often and weight lifts out to compensate.

“What’s good for first timer?” Lena asks the clerk.

“What do you like? Fruity ones have the pink circles, sweeter or chocolaty ones are black circles, gold is for savory like peanut butter or coffee or cinnamon.”

“Thanks, I’ll need a minute.”

“Your usual, Ms. Zor-El?”

“What?” Lena hisses.

“Got it legally changed.  Well, fixed the false records and got a new ID. Keeps my family out of it.”

“Not that!  The fact that you have a usual at an ice cream store across the street from my office.  You stalking me?”

Kara wiggles a frequent customer card.

“She has a loyalty club profile on the web page,” the clerk explains.

“Huh,” Lena muses.  “That’s a neat trick.”

“You need to get out more,” Kara and Mercy say at the same instant.

“Pizza Hut has favorite orders…” They both add.

Mercy looks confused.  Kara looks like someone just handed her a balloon and cotton candy.

"Neat!" Kara squeals.  "Do it again. Say something and I'll try to say it at the exact same time."

"I will not," Mercy snaps.

“Yeah, but can you use the vegan ones?  Give me two extra scoops and two spoons, in a sharing bowl.  Please and thanks.”

“Sounds like a sweet first date,” the clerk chortles.

“You're punny.  Should try hang-up comedy."

Lena groans.  Mercy makes some sound that is not a normal laugh but also would not terrify her enemies.  Must be her laugh.

_Mercy freaking Graves laughed at my joke._

"Oh and this one,” Kara indicates Lena.

“Is a...VIP so one of her security people needs to check the food.  Nothing personal. Mercy...if you’d be so kind?”

“I don’t meet many VIPs here,” the clerk muses.

She bows.

“Milady.”

Lena snorts.

“More a matter of having money and crazy people trying to kill me on the regular.”

“That’s sad.  I hope that changes for you.  I’ll go get started.”

Mercy follows after her...strangely tense for someone tailing an ice cream store employee.

“What the blazes was that,” Lena asks no one in particular.  “Why does she care?”

She sounds genuinely puzzled.

“Because people other than Lillian Luthor think death threats and emotional abuse are bad and they don’t want them happening, even to strangers.”

“Oh.”

_Merciful Rao. I need to be careful with Lena. It’s like she’s from another planet...where meeting a normal, decent person feels strange._

“What’s your usual?”

“Strawberry, Peanut Butter, Honey Vanilla, chocolate drizzle.  Reminds me of a sandwich I made when I was a kid...plus chocolate,”  Kara licks her lips. “That all right?”

“Save me from deciding.  The anxiety was kicking in standing here holding up the line.  None of this is rabbit food and I usually eat rabbit food,” she whispers back.  "Yesterday was cheat day for July."

“Why, pray tell?”

“Uh, I’m fat,” Lena says, like it is the most obvious thing in the world.

“No.  You’re you.  Not many people can or should look like me.  As to whether your curves are cheesecake, frozen yogurt or whipped cream...my tongue will be the judge of that, Lena.”

Lena’s back wiggles nervously under Kara’s hand.

When the clerk returns with their dish--shaped like an old Greek warship--Lena’s eyebrow arches.

“That is a lot of ice cream.”

“It’s not that bad.  The vegan stuff is even lower in calories.  Whatever you don’t want, I’ll eat. Believe me.”  

She leans close.  “Never take a Kryptonian somewhere that’s all you can eat.”

“Why?”  

“Because I need ten to thirty thousand calories to keep this,” Kara gestures at her body  “Working. The cells that process sunlight and the ones that do the quantum entangling are especially lipid-hungry.”

“Wait!" Lena demands.  "Quantum entanglement...organically?  As a anatomical system like, say, my lymph nodes?”

Kara nods.

“It was a one in a million thing during our dark ages. Legends where some guy would get hit with boiling oil and shrug it off because some tree four feet away just caught fire. Later when we proved it was real, we started enhancing it with genetic engineering.  Under a yellow sun, our skin takes in way more energy to support the process. Works even better.”

Lena stare out the window at cars whizzing by.

“I always wondered how Superman could just stop in midair.  Zero motion after high speed with no counter-thrust. Or how he can walk through an apartment fire and pick up someone's lost checkbook without singing it seconds later.  The reason you seem to cheat basic physics is you expel your entropy and inertia? Dump it somewhere else?” Lena asks.

“Cha-ching. Exactly. Lots of little places, actually. Nearby pockets of unusually dense, hot or entropy rich space or matter. As cells die and are replaced, the old cell is consumed but the material never entangles exactly the same way again.”

“The new ones entangle elsewhere,” Lena realizes.  “Fresh entropy sinks.”

“If you weren’t so lovely you simply must be the Queen of the Winter Faeries, I’d swear you were a scientist.  C’mon. Ice cream’s getting soft.”

“Heaven forbid,” Lena teases, leaning over the ice cream so as not to spill any on her dress.

Her strapless dress in velvet red fabric with an amazing neckline that doesn’t show her breasts directly but makes it clear what the scoop of the neckline is defined by.  

_Apparently she keeps clothes suitable for visiting a state dinner in her closet at work? That or they’re for time travel. Time-lesbianing. Maybe seducing Elizabeth the First?  Rao, that dress..._

Kara lets her right hand--the one under the table--go white hot to prevent her from melting the ice cream, bowl and table.

Mercy stands casually by the bathrooms, pretending to talk on her cell phone.  Otis is somewhere.

Kara doubts anyone else hears it.

“Foolish boy… You have bared steel to an Amazon...sheath thy weapon and remove thy hand from me or I will take thy hand.”

Kara giggles.

_No robberies of any stores makes a lot more sense._

The ringing sound of a steel blade being pulled from its scabbard catches Kara’s attention.

“Mercy,” Kara hisses.  “Might want to keep Otis from getting cut open.”

“It is lunchtime already?” she grumbles, hurrying to rescue her brother.

The table is groaning under Kara’s hands now, steel creaking and the glass top powdering under her fingers.

“ _Vhoc’s rotting hole_ ,” she groans, clutching her head.  “Lena...something’s wrong. I think I’ve been poisoned.”

“What?”

Kara thinks back.

“Mercy checked the food but the server dropped the spoons.  Who handed us the new spoons?”

“Otis.”

“Lena, it had to be him.  This is definitely Kryptonite but not...normal," Kara hisses.

"Hurts. It’s been tampered with. Someone figured out that I can’t be stuck with a knife, so they put it in my food.”

Kara flips over her spoon and Lena’s.

“Red dust.  Glowing red dust,” Lena notices.  “Why is it on mine?”

“Because Otis is the dumbest traitor ever. I have to go, babe. This is...not good. Something’s messing with my self control and my temper.  I need to work this out away from people. Especially the most important person in the world.”

She thumbs some ice cream off the edge of Lena’s lip.

“I’ll update you in a couple hours.”

“Go,” Lena whispers.  “But come back. I need you in my life.”

“Each time I hear that, I like it more,” Kara sighs.

She tosses money on the table and sprints outside, taking to the air and breaking the sound barrier immediately.

_This is going to hurt._

  
  


* * *

 

### BONUS SCENE:

* * *

 

**July 13, 2006 | Kara Danvers**

North Korea 

 

“Ow.”

Kara looks around. She is tied to a chair with what seems to be ship anchor chain. She could break it but with this ache in her back, arms and legs, she’d rather not. Three huge cylinders are in the room with her.

 _Cylinders with fins._ She can feel the faint sizzle of radiation on her skin. Unlike normally, the radiation hurts.

_Sloppy work. I should not be able to feel gamma if they do their jobs._

[Kolex, what did thet hit me with?]

[Ten-kiloton primer for a hydrogen bomb. Detonated on the surface as you approached. Due to your Worldkiller, excuse me...due to your Destroyer grafts, your inner layers of skin were not penetrated.]

[Why not?]

[Neutron matter and exotic matter weave. Six layers total. Each neutron layer is ten particles thick and each pair sandwiches a one-millimeter layer of exotic matter.  A crystalline layer of neg-energy and neg-mass...similar to warp drive excitation fluid.]

“Cool!”

[However your outer layers are fully enervated and feel pain.  Your eyes, mouth and mucous membranes are not nearly as hardened.  The damage was severe and healing it depleted you. You fainted.]

[Explains why it hurts. Prognosis?]

[You were imbalanced by the synthetic Kryptonite and your body’s defenses were overtaxed. Additionally you were already exhausted from the raids in Russia, Congo and the camps here. You will need to take in yellow sun radiation, in quantity, very soon or you will lose your powers. Given the tissue damage and metabolic strain, you could die of exhaustion as well.]

[That’s...bad.]

[Extremely.  I would miss you.]

[Temporarily lose my powers?]

[Unless they kill you, you would regain them. If you survive, the Earth does still have a yellow sun and even under rock…]

He doesn’t seem to want to share it.

[Kolex?]

[Rock erodes. You will not age, you do not need to breathe and if motionless, you consume almost no food...heat and background radiation would suffice.  Though you would go into coma. Eventually this mountain will blow to dust and uncover you, exposing your skin to sunlight. But your family, your human family...would all be dead.]

[Plan A can fuck right off.]

[It truly can.] Kolex replies.

[Where was I when I collapsed?]

[Clean room. Trying to gather up the remaining critical masses and unfinished bomb cores.  You were muttering about 'toddlers with grown up toys' while you did so.]

[Uh-huh. So this thing in my hands...that they seem to have tried to saw out?]

[Ten-kiloton trigger with the explosives removed. Hard burn from the plutonium is why your hands hurt. If you were to...smash...it would detonate.]

[Secondary hydrogen bomb explosions with the Larry, Moe and Curly here?]

[Correct. The mountain would be vaporized. If you are not destroyed, you will have access to sunlight.]

“Well,” Kara laughs. “That’s handy.”

 

* * *

 

**July 13, 2006 | Lena Luthor**

National City, California 

LuthorCorp West / L-Tech Solutions construction site. 

105th floor, Lena Luthor’s Apartment 

 

Lena has been staring in disbelief at her bedroom television for eighteen hours. So much is happening that the station has yet to put the headlines on loop, so she took notes. Mercy has been here the whole time. Otis is tied to a chair in the basement while Metallica on headphones deprives him of sleep.  Mercy is sitting beside her on the bed as Lena reviews, looking over her shoulder.

_Flotilla of refugee ships approaching Aphrodite's Veil in the Aegean Sea. Chechens and Congolese women and children. Seeking asylum on Themyscira? Can men even set foot there? Kara wouldn’t dump them there if it endangered them. Even as manic as she looked, she was gentle with them._

“Huh,” Lena mutters. A lower-class word Lillian would hit her for using. “Is that island part of an archipelago?”

_The wall around Gaza built up four times as tall and ten times as thick with all the border points sealed.  Heavily armored boat-docks installed on the Palestinian side. She piled up raw sand and rock and glassed it. Israelis are going to have trouble making raids now and Palestinians have access to the world by sea._

“Well…it’s an idea,” Mercy admits. “I’m guessing the President will be pissed but both sides have a harder time killing each other now and food can get in.”

“True,” Lena sighs. “An experiment.”

_The concentration camps for Chechen queers are empty. Burned to the ground. Have to give her a kiss for that when she gets back._

Mercy points at the TV.  “Something new”

 

 

> **“Shocking images from North Korea where the government claims to have captured Superwoman and is planning to execute her unless the US recognizes it as the sole nuclear power in the world and surrenders unconditionally. These...gruesome images were broadcast minutes ago although they may have been shot earlier.”**
> 
> **Kara is tied to a chair, skin of her hands sliced and peeled back in a dozen places.  No bone can be seen and she seems able to hold on to whatever that thing she's protecting is.  A buzz-saw with a blade worn to a nubbin can be seen in the background. Three massive bombs--nuclear bombs with hastily painted fallout symbols--surround her chair.**
> 
> **“American lackey! What is your name?”**
> 
> **“Welcome to Lackety Split, where you can get a sundae quick as you please.  May I take your order?”**
> 
>  

“Oh dear,” Lena laughs. “Leave it to her to find that the right time for a dad joke.”

_Please be alive, please be alive, please be alive._

Lena has been making full use of the Gaelic translation of the rosary she looked up.  Maybe her birth mother had the right idea...distract herself from things she cannot possibly control.

 

 

> **“You have violated the glorious borders of the People’s Republic. You have stolen our children and butchered and eaten their flesh.”**
> 
>  

“Baby-eating feels like a stretch,” Mercy mutters. “She looked like she was going to apologize to the spider she moved out of your office.”

>  
> 
> **“You have indoctrinated our people away from Juche and turned them against the glorious leader.”**
> 
> **“Not sorry about breaking open your death camps,” Kara shrugs.**
> 
> **She has something basketball-sized in her hands.**
> 
> **“Wait! Glorious leader? Was he the little dude with the shitty haircut? Look...if he hadn’t been squirming so damned much, I wouldn’t have nicked him with the trimmers.”**
> 
> **“For crimes against our glorious nation, we sentence you to death. Our army is far beyond the falsely calibrated and rusted American imperial murder toys. They cannot kill you. Only the glorious nati-”**
> 
> **“Shut up already!” Kara groans.**
> 
> **“SUPERWOMAN MAD! SHE SMASH!”**
> 
> **She crushes whatever was between her hands and the signal goes dead.**
> 
>  
> 
> **The anchor comes back and the look of shock and fear seems genuine.**
> 
> **“Worrisome and puzzling images from North Korea, broadcast six minutes ago. Is Superwoman alive? Has she suffered a mental breakdown? What do we make of her sudden attempt to reshape regimes in four countries? Please stay on this channel for breaking news.”**

 

Lena drops the rosary. Mercy drops the glass of water she had.

“Think she?” Lena asks, forcing each word past a throat full of knives.

“If she was doing a suicide run, the joke seem off brand for her,” Mercy decides, threading her fingers through her hair.

“I would hope she would be saying goodbye to me,” Lena sniffles. “Telling me she loved me.  If she knew it was the end.”

“She would," Mercy assures Lena.  

“Rule one of killing someone: if you don't see a body, maybe they’re not dead.  Rule two: if you don't see them coming towards you, maybe they’re not alive. Rule three: find out which it is.”

"I'll take it from someone with expertise," Lena teases.

Mercy hums and clicks her tongue and paces the room.  She pulls out her phone.

“Arias? Can you get me Vrox? I need someone on the science side.”

Sam says something on the other end.

“Yeah. I need her to speak to Mineral and Aerospace. Lena’s living room. Make sure they bring their laptops and sat-phones. Yeah. I’m scared for her too. Both of them.”

Tensor-Nine 'Tatiana' Vrox comes in with a ridiculous, LED-spangled gaming laptop, three binders and a cup of coffee.  Their first non-human hire, top R&D whiz and the hire Lena's proudest of. Usually a Lillian-grade ice queen...except not evil and with lime-green skin made of alloy and synthetic diamond.

Hard to read the cues on someone with no body fluids...  Lena supposes. But was she crying all night?

Lena knows that she adored Superwoman as did most of L-Tech's small but growing corp of off-the-books alien employees.  Their secret employee lounge has posters and fantasy Justice League betting pools which all ended up as 'Superwoman vs' and some amalgamation of other heroes.

Vrox crouches down beside Lena.

“How can I help, Lena?”

“Hop up," Lena offers, patting the bed.  "This is me asking as a friend."

Vrox kicks off her heels and lays on the ridiculously oversize bed, propped up on her elbows and looking over her laptop screen.

"What's the thought, boss lady?"

"If she survived that...I'm guessing she needed a change of scenery, sunlight and rest.  In that order. If she could still fly…”

Lena snaps her fingers.

“Is Lex’s old spy satellite still up?”

Vrox nods. “Air Force keeps offering to shoot it down. Think they want to test a new toy.”

“Point it at the place where the sun rises over the Earth. Track the daylight side of the planet.”

Vrox taps some keys.   “Re-positioned! Not much juice left in the thrusters.  This will be the last hurrah.”

Mercy puts her hand on Lena’s shoulder.

“Penny for your thoughts, mouse.”

“Best case," Lena rasps, forcing herself to breathe.

"She survived and escaped and was strong enough to do it flying. If she was telling me the truth in the ice cream place...sunlight supports all her other abilities. Brightest sunlight near Earth would be high orbit and no one could bother her there if she was weakened. The ISS sees “dawn” every ninety minutes. So if she made it there to recharge and we watch orbit where it's sunny, we limit our maximum wait time. Shortest wait and looking in the place where we would see the best possible news.”

_See if my heart can even handle ten minutes._

“Kara was telling you the truth, mouse. Thirty seconds from smearing caramel sauce on your tits eating a scoop out of your cunt, but telling the truth.”

“That,” Vrox mutters, looking up from her laptop. “...is both the most pornographic thing and most Romeo and Juliet thing I can imagine. Humans seem to prefer difficult and conflicted sexual encounters over simpler and more enjoyable ones.  Why?”

"We're inefficient like that," Mercy sighs.

_Yeah, let’s not do that. Romeo and Juliet die at the end._

Lena doesn't even realize she's touching her lips until she pulls back fingers covered in tear-diluted lipstick.

Vrox puts the image up on screen.

“What’s that?” Mercy asks, walking nose-to-nose with the TV. “There, just below the line of sunlight.”

Vrox taps some keys.

“Apparently, it is a cloud of space debris that got melted together by an explosion. Which is not what usually happens to space debris.”

Lena’s phone rings. Her heart leaps into her throat.

“H-h-hello?”

“Hi!”

“Hello,” Lena croaks.

“Lena, honey, I am so sorry I didn’t get back to you yet.  I need to let this wear off or I could hurt you...unintentionally.  I need to hug you so bad and I need to be tip-top on control for your ribs’ sake.”

“So, turns out space is really cold and after the bombs I’m naked.  Oh. I'm dizzy from all the heat and light...my friend calls it 'sundrunk'.  Makes it hard to hold on to the air bubble we're talking in. But to be fair I was basically a rage monster the last day and a half so I wasn’t planning.   I can’t just warp back to your bedroom..."

 _Usually she could?   Just pop in...hover over me in the moonlight and slither under the covers?_ Never has one momentary thought in Lena's brain had such a lasting effect between her legs.  

"...because I’m above the Van Allen Belt and Star Trek did not cover the dangers of particle radiation bursts when you drop out near a life-bearing world.”

“Idea!  Is Lena Luthor there? She’s really smart. Maybe she can help figure out where to go without killing anybody or flying down slow, which would probably end up with my Superbits in the tabloids.”

“Ocean trench,” Vrox suggests. “Deep one. There’s one off South America. If you can target there you’ll cook a few fish but the wat-”

“The water will block the rest of it! Whoever you are, you just made my morning workout so much simpler!”

Vrox blinks at her laptop. Or rather, the colony of nanite-wrapped computer processors that is Vrox sort themselves in such a way as to mimic the act of blinking.

“Workout? That is significantly beyond healthy exertion for Kryptonians. Kara should find other hobbies.”

Lena laughs.

“I love you, Kara Zor-El.  I miss you. I’m mad as hell but I love you.”

“I love you, Lena Luthor. You have every right to be mad. I can explain when I get back...please know I would have stayed if I could be sure you were safe. Can you meet me on the beach? Maybe bring a towel or hit Winn up for my clothes? Say...west coast of Honduras?”

“Will you be naked?”

“Yes.”

“Will you be lethally radioactive?”

“No,” Kara replies immediately. “Might be lethally sexy...sunbaths are catnip for my skin.”

Lena laughs.

_Moonlight.  Tropical Birds.  Kara rising out of the waves dripping wet.  Walking onto the beach like..._

“I will come alone!" Lena blurts out.

"Need at least ten hours by chopper.  Probably fourteen.”

"Sounds great, Lena.  Do you own a swimsuit?  It's lovely down there."

"No," Lena admits.  "Would not dare be seen in it."

"Perfect," Kara whispers.  "Even better."

 _And now we're all the way to foreplay by telephone,_ Lena worries.   _Mercy would run to a toy store, I'm sure but wonder how much of a raise I will need to get that helicopter pilot?_

A huge all-black robot materializes behind Mercy who--to her great credit--puts three rounds into the thing before it does anything. It was clearly meant to look and act human because it actually rubs its eyes to clear the flattened slugs out.

"Whatthefuckisthat?" Mercy demands.

"Infiltration and combat android," Kara confesses, in one of her rising inflected statements that sounds like a question.  Lena can imagine her rubbing her neck nervously. "I put six of them on guard duty. They were to stay cloaked until it was important."

"Owie," the robot intones.  "That one is mean."

_Kara programmed that thing, all right._

"Kara..." Mercy pants.  "Clue me in. I can't work with tools, or soldiers, robots, or robot soldiers...that I can't see.  When a team is not in sync on body-watch, it is is bad fucking news. Ask Otis..."

"Right. I should get us all on the same page with my first-day-anniversary presents.  For those guys I have to look at what the protocols allow. I may have to pull and rebuild the circuits. Right now they're wired as fanatics...only Lena matters to them.  For now, Mercy, just assume that they will get in your face if you act in ways that might look threatening on say, security cameras. Play it safe."

_Anniversary of first day?  That's sweet! I guess Kara did offer to spend her life with me after thirty minutes.  Guess she wasn't lying about the for-life culture she's from...must have been a romantic place._

"Fifi, give Lena her present. Play nicely with Mercy!"

_Fifi?  Dare I wonder what the others are named?_

"Yes, Lady Kara."

The robot reaches into its--uniform? jumpsuit?--and retrieves something which it offers in its hand.  Then another. Then another. Finally it has laid half a dozen gizmos in Lena's lap. Three metal rods the size of Lena's forearm, two sets of stacked rings the size of a large earring and one the size of a postage stamp. Each of them blindingly white and glowing. A small sphere of similar material but with dark black etchings on it that move on its snow-white casing.

"Those," Vrox explains, not looking up.  "Are transmat arrays, a transmat power and control hub and a biometric-lock signal booster."

She lifts her gaze from her laptop. "Luxury ones. Kandoori school of design, not Argonite.  More curves, fewer control glyphs, no chunky edges. Extravagant waste of translucent promethium alloys just so it makes pretty lights and has swoopy lettering.  Someone's pussy-whipped."

"Your point being..." Kara chortles.

Lena turns her face away from the mirror before she can see herself blush.

"Who are you, anyhow?"

"Tatiana Vrox, Lena's new R&D team lead."

"Tatiana.  Good call. It's much less of a mouthful than those mathematical aliases your registries use.  May I presume you are of the Colu Prime Vroxes?"

"The same."

"Charmed," Kara drawls.  "Ktharra Zor-El, House of El.  Of the supernova debris cloud Els."

"Hey, Lena?" she stage-whispers.  "She tell you she was basically a empress?"

Vrox tries to disappear behind her laptop.

"Yeah," Kara whispers.  "Colu is a pure meritocracy.  The more the family contributes, the higher they rank and the more resources they can access.  Tati is smart and her ideas are useful to the Continuity...boom! Increased access to ships, resources, living quarters, travel."

"I have to keep earning it rather than going to Harvard or Academy of Argo because daddy did.  Once humans or Kryptonians build an actual meritocracy...then you can analyze my culture," Vrox complains.  

Kara laughs.

"Never let this one manage cute employees.  The Vroxes are notorious. Smartest people you'll ever meet but also sex junkies and party animals.  Nymphomaniac supercomputers. Our home planets are 22,000 light years apart and I've heard of their parties since I was six."

"You're thinking of my sisters or my dad," Vrox deadpans. "I'm more of a sex wizard.  And I don't drink."

"You're non-organic, Tati.  Why would you drink?" Kara teases.

"Op-op-op!" Tati interrupts.  "Beside the point. Not drinking alcohol that wouldn't affect me is a moral virtue, Kara.  Leaves more for others. And it's not a sex addiction unless it affects my performance at work."

Lena doesn't like this.  Tati is her friend--she thinks, only the second time having friends--and they get along well but she is on payroll and this is getting raunchy fast.

"I'm...going to go now, Kara.  Before this becomes an HR issue by sheer volume of innuendo."

Vrox shrinks back behind her screen.

"Sorry, boss."

Lena mouths 'her fault too' at Vrox and nods at her phone.

"And before me or my staff make a bigger fool of ourselves."

"Aw, babe!  No!" Kara whines.  "This is the funniest conference call in...ever."

"I'm hanging up now, Kara!" Lena snaps.

Lena disconnects before something can weaken her resolve.

"Mad at her, huh mouse?"

"Less so by the minute.  But I needed to sort of channel it if I wanted to actually get motivated to get out of bed.  I...I could have laid here all day, just soaking in the endorphins from knowing she's alive.  I thought she was dead, Mercy. She's alive and recovering from whatever my mother's poison did to her.  Laughing and and talking to me and it was like we were girlfriends chatting over a lunch break."

Vrox rolls her eyes.

"Solar energy is a key element of her metabolism.  Kara seems to have extreme fixation on you, sexually, romantically and economically. These gifts took enough exotic minerals to create that they would represent a dowry to some Great Houses.  You are having lunch with your girlfriend. Or more accurately, sugar momma was having lunch while making you squirm."

Lena coughs.

"You picked up a lot for someone who landed a month ago.  Always surprise me, Vrox. Just when I think you're all business..."

"You find out I exist in an analog sense?  I'm actually having a barbecue Friday. Bring your Kryptonian.  Hear about what my twin Tanka and I did in that dance club last Tuesday?"

"It was...wow.”

"...should I worry?" Mercy asks.

"No one involved will complain and no one involved was one of her students, so no.  The story will float around. This is a small town, somehow."

"Think it's time Kara and I call ourselves girlfriends?" Lena asks Mercy.

"As your chief of security, I'll allow it.  You can call yourselves girlfriends."


	17. OVER THE WIRE: Breaking News From CatCo Worldwide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "OVER THE WIRE" is a series of sound bites from news broadcasts or political speeches, covering other events around the world over a period of time.
> 
> This installment covers July 14, 2006 and the scenes are chronological.

 

* * *

 

Lena has been staring at a one-line email she meant to write for  _two hours_ now.  Mercy insisted she work from her penthouse -- new construction -- while her people checked and rechecked her office.  Lex's old office.  Still...she can usually handle it.

She doesn't usually have something like dinner with her girlfriend to look forward to though.

She also typically does not have to ride a wave of nearly painful arousal that borders on orgasm when her old habit of bouncing her leg resurfaces.

When the box transmitted into the middle of her bedroom, Lena was curious.  Inside were six perfectly spherical balls, three each of two sizes and empty cradles for six more.  The card simply read 'your half, love Kara'.  Never one to waste an opportunity for investigation, Lena decided to take one of them downstairs and examine it into the lab.  Three overheated industrial lasers later, she learned that they are apparently  _metal_ and  _mathematically perfectly round_ and _impervious to everything she has access to_ and according to Mercy, meant for Lena's private enjoyment.

How Mercy knew what a _ben wah_ ball is will be discussed next time Mercy's relief team shows up and they can go drinking together.  The look of abject horror on Lena's face must have been priceless.

So here Lena sits, desperately trying to work while looking forward to dinner with Kara while three flawless spheres of metal beyond human imagining spread her and rub her whenever she moves and clink against each other--sometimes audibly!--in her depths.  She can only pray they are made of god-only-knows because Kara is wearing the other three at this very moment.

"This is hell, Mercy.  I haven't gotten anything done."

"Hell? Quite the opposite. Your eyes prove that.  As does the fact that you are red, cheeks to shirt collar...and probably beyond."

"That," Lena scoffs, shifting slightly to adjust the computer screen.

"...is not the point," she gasps.

_Moving was a mistake.  Kara, this is not fair!  I am flesh, weak, human flesh and just the smell of you torments me.  Now you have to add wearing these at work all day?_

If anyone else is present when she shows up for dinner, Lena may take Lillian's view on the usefulness of murder.

The intercom comes on.

"Yes, Jess?"

Lena hoped she kept her desperation out of her voice but Jess is nothing if not observant.  She strongly recommended  _slacks_ today and never explained why.  It became clear around noon when her panties all but dissolved and only Lena's slacks stood between gravity and a deeply embarrassing investor meeting.

"National City Police Department.  SWAT team, in fact.  They need to speak with you."

"Send them in."

Mercy is on her feet, back straight and hands  _visible_ but near enough to her gun that no cop is going to beat her to the draw.  Otis rambles in from the nearby filing area where Mercy had him on shit duty filing accounting reports.  Keeping him an unlawful prisoner forever was never a good option.

"Miss Luthor?"

The officer in charge is a short, dark-skinned woman wearing a tiny gold crucifix which she has laid  _outside_ her bulletproof vest.  She has a presence and physicality that easily matches Mercy's.

"Yes, officer, how may I help you?"

"Detective.  Detective Maggie Sawyer and I'm here at the request of the FBI.  Miss Graves, please step aside."

The officer reaches behind her back, retrieves her handcuffs and motions for Lena to back away.

"Otis Graves, you are under under arrest for violating Export Administration Regulations.  You have the right to remain silent.  Anything you sa-"

Lena sees it and the officer sees it and Mercy sees it but none of them can do anything.  Otis has pulled what looks like a plastic explosive charge from behind his back and is holding up the trigger.

_Dead man's trigger.  Son of a bitch._

"Sorry, miss Luthor.  Boss lady says you need to die."

Otis' head explodes in a spray of bone and blood and brains that coats the window behind Lena and half of Lena's shirt.  Mercy dives for the trigger, catches it and clamps it down.

"Drop the weapon!" Sawyer barks.

Mercy holds her beloved Ingram out--still smoking--and lets go of the grip.

"Officers, I have no intention of hurting anyone.  But before I can let  _that_ go, someone needs to duct tape it closed and you need the bomb squad up here."

Sawyer turns to the SWAT guys and starts barking orders.

"Mercy Graves, you are under arrest for manslaughter."

"Makes sense," Mercy chuckles.

_She just killed her brother.  To save me.  Least I can do is have her taken care of._

"Detective...Sawyer, correct?"

Maggie nods.

"If you would be so kind, place Ms. Graves on suicide watch.  She has no family.  And she just had to kill her twin brother in the heat of the moment."

"And Mercy will say  _nothing_ until  _my attorneys_ arrive.  Do I make myself clear?"

"Thank you," Mercy whispers.

Lena gives a tiny nod, one only someone who survived Lillian would even see.

"Fifi," Lena says into thin air.  She's never sure where they are.  "Please uncloak and assist the detectives with bomb disposal."

Fifi and five more of her kin: Mitzi, Gigi, Bambi, Jackie and Jonnie all appear in the corners of the room.  Fifi and Mitzi are on either side of Lena's makeshift desk.  Each has a six plasma emitters extended from their arms trained on what is left of Otis Graves.

"Apologies for the shock officers.  These are my _other_ bodyguards.  Apparently Superwoman would rather no harm befalls to her arch-nemesis."

Detective Sawyer's lip twitches into a quickly-suppressed smirk.

"That  _would_ look suspicious.  Stand down boys.  No poking the robot bear."

 

 

* * *

 

 

> **“Thank you, Jessica. I’m here in the Aegean Sea on the lead ship in a flotilla of refugee vessels that is steaming--you heard that right--steaming towards a little X on a map. This old girl was pulled from a scrapyard in the Caspian, welded up and tossed into the water by Superwoman. She may be showing her years,”**
> 
> **The anchor laughs, patting the ship’s railing fondly.**
> 
> **“But she’s been able to get eleven hundred and ninety three souls safely from the north coast of Africa to…”**
> 
>  
> 
> **The signal cuts out.**

 

 

 

> **“That was recorded by Vicki Vale, a correspondent from the _Gotham Tribune_ who records some of MSNBC and CatCo’s international pieces. She went missing, along with the ship she was on.“**
> 
> **“I’m Rachel Maddow, guest-hosting Strange New World for CatCo worldwide. Okay, so guest hosting is an exaggeration. I had a chance to talk about Wonder Woman and get paid for it so basically I hung around the studio begging until they gave up.”**
> 
> **“I have with me Dr. James Halpern, author of _World History of a World that Wasn’t: Lessons for Our Daughters from Themyscira, Bana-Mighdall, Akaluu and the Maidenlands._ Jim, you’re an expert on Amazonian cultu-.’**
> 
> **A small gray-haired fellow with horn rimmed glasses and a thin-lipped smirk holds up a hand.**
> 
> **“Don’t tell Wonder Woman that...I have a family.”**
> 
> **The audience _erupts_ in laughter.**
> 
> **“Smart man,” Rachel quips.**
> 
> **“Vicki Vale’s ship went missing and then one by one, all the ships went missing. Simple question: what happened?”**
> 
> **Jim smiles.**
> 
> **“Those people--I confess, I’m jealous--just crossed Aphrodite’s Veil. A barrier of magic put in place by the Olympian gods prior to their defeat. Any ship, aircraft, or person who crosses it alive has been judged worthy of love and happiness by Aphrodite, Athena and Hestia and anointed by the Goddess’ mark, as the Amazonians call it.”**
> 
> **“What does that mean, for those of our audience not _yet_ living in a magical feminist utopia?”**
> 
> **“They’re safe. From the drawings I’ve seen--Wonder Woman’s memories of her home--that place is paradise, as best we can conceive it. Turquoise seas, emerald jungles, rich black soil in the farmland. Sunshine and soaking rain in the fields and snow on the mountain peaks. No storms. No floods.”**
> 
> **“And no men.”**
> 
> **“No men on Themyscira itself but their scholars know that at least twelve other islands were created--those can be seen with a handheld telescope--one for the chosen of each Olympian god or goddess. There are likely many more created by more minor gods for their champions. But due to abundance, peace and the safety a culture of trained warriors give them, the Amazons never felt a burning desire to expand their borders within the Veil. Their island was enough.”**
> 
> **“So any men landing on Themysciran soil will be thrown back -- literally -- into the ocean. But as Bana-Mighdall and Akaluu show us, Amazons as a people--as a race--are not monolithic. Bana-Mighdall is a genderstate, like Themyscira is. Merely hidden in the deserts of Iran instead of in the Greek seas. No men. Walls to keep us out. I’m told the queen is fond of Xerxes--her tomcat--but no human males. In both those cases, the original Amazons chose to supplement their ranks with children, keeping only the girls. Those children were fathered by outside men during raids on the high seas. Sailors will...forgive a great deal if it’s coming from a pretty woman.”**
> 
> **The audience laughs again.**
> 
> **“The Maidenlands are a long band of hills and coastal cliffs running from Sweden to the Russian coastline far to the north. The only barrier that protects them is vicious blizzards and the fact that the border patrols are made up of Valkyries. Men supplicate themselves at the border with feats of strength and courage. Some are taken in and released years later. Any male children are sent away at maturity but some return and as far as we know, are welcomed.  Traders do go in and out though they are sworn to secrecy about what they see within the borders.  We know next to nothing besides what we learn when a shieldmaiden hunting party chases down a threat outside the border.”**
> 
> **“Excuse me...Valkyries?”**
> 
> **“For all intents and purposes, yes. Female warriors of Nordic ancestry and superhuman strength, training their entire lives, centuries in most cases, for battle. It seems that when the goddess Hera chose to make warriors out of the souls of women raped and murdered in ancient wars, she was not the only goddess to do so, or she shared her brainstorm.”**
> 
> **“Based on runic carvings at the border, Frigga, Freya and Sigyn of Norse religions are worshiped in the Maidenlands.  Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of sex and death is worshiped in Bana-Mighdall and an unnamed snake-goddess is widely worshiped in Akaluu. She is typically painted or carved as a white cobra coiled around Akaluu, striking at the world beyond. We don’t have a textual record of Akaluuan traditions so we presume it is an ancient goddess of the area to whom all other references died out.”**
> 
> **“Akaluu sits--or rather hides--on the border of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania and it is a dual-gendered state. Only women may bear arms or hold the higher elected offices.  Men are taken as adults or accepted as orphan boys. Every man is legally bound to provide labor in a household of his choosing, whether as a husband, platonic companion or simply as a servant. The typical family unit is two or more women and one man--two men in a large and wealthy family--who father children if the women are interested, care for them and practice whatever trade they know.  Whether the relationship is sexual or not, he defers to the women of the house and is nurturer, teacher, cook, cleaner...things we see as _women’s work.”_**
> 
> **“Given the potential fertility of one man versus several women and with a dedicated live-in caregiver, large families are common in households which have biological children. He contributes economically with his non-domestic labor but his job, his sacred role as it is taught in their religion, is ‘hearth-lighter’ because he _fathers_ children, the only task they cannot do for themselves, and cares for the home they share.”**
> 
> **“It is quite frankly, an inversion of Western gender norms as we had them a hundred and fifty years ago...or have them now in small town Alabama where I grew up.”**
> 
> **The audience chuckles. Rachel’s smile broadens.**
> 
> **“So, let me get this straight. A jungle paradise filled with beautiful women and a live-in manservant provided by the state to cook and clean? How soon can me and my wife get passports?”**
> 
> **“Ask Wonder Woman....” the professor chuckles.**
> 
> **“...and don’t buy a return ticket. When a fish or a dolphin swims in, it gets stuck. This is why the oceanic life in the area is so different and so much richer than ours. A whale that escaped a whaling ship into Amazonian waters is forever safe and the magic that makes the islands so fertile extends to the seas. In fact, Wonder Woman is the only living being of any kind that has ever crossed that barrier _both ways_ at will _._ It appears the Olympian gods broke their own rules to allow her that after her defeat of Ares...she tells me she travels back for winter solstice each year."**
> 
> **"The pantheons which founded Bana-Mighdall and Akaluu have similar restrictions.”**
> 
> **“As lovely as this background is, professor, back to the refugees?”**
> 
> **Jim clears his throat.**
> 
> **“Of course. For our purposes, those people are gone. I suspect they will be given lands to settle on any uninhabited island, the men and boys will be _sternly lectured_ on their manners and Themyscira will continue on as it always has. Any women or girls are welcome settle on Themyscira itself and given the nature of the Chechen refugees, I’m sure some of the female inmates of the camps will do so.  If some wish to leave later on, they will leave...though given the way time flows or does not flow there, it may be centuries for us before they leave and a few years from from their perspective.”**
> 
> **He tents his fingers and smiles.**
> 
> **“Exactly how much were you paying Vicki Vale? Because it has to be worth _leaving paradise_ and _living forever_ or you may never get that footage,” the professor teases.**
> 
> **Someone comes into the studio and whispers in Rachel's ear.**
> 
> **“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m told we have new footage from Ms Vale, which, drumroll please…”**
> 
> **“...was apparently found in a box floating on an empty rowboat outside the Veil.  Along with her press badge.  I guess you were right, professor.”**
> 
>  

* * *

 

Kara looks around her apartment -- her place! -- and sighs.

Boxes of unopened knick-knacks and paperback novels from Midvale are stacked high in the corner with a bag of snacks from Eliza on top. Alex’s combat boots are by the doorway and she -- and Maggie -- are napping on the couch in a tangle of exhausted limbs and sweaty hair.  Winn took the next door apartment and James loaned his camera so they could take photos for posterity.

They wouldn’t let Kara do all the heavy lifting, for some stupid reason.  Winn insisted, moving what he could manage.  Alex and Maggie really put a lot of work in and now that Kara thinks about it, did so in minimal clothing--tank tops and yoga pants.

_Was all that...foreplay?  If so, they failed because they are out cold.  My couch is going to reek of lesbian by the time Lena gets here...hope she doesn't get territorial._

Some unoccupied part of her brain decides that now, with company present, would be a good time to fantasize about what could have happened in Honduras. When Kara got out of the water, Lena was standing in the wind with her hair and her half-open kimono whipping around in the balmy air. Any thoughts of a torrid session on the beach evaporated when Lena’s eyes--wild as the jungles behind them--met Kara’s. Much as Lena protested her readiness, the red stains and chapped skin of her face told a different story.

She collapsed into Kara’s arms, sobbing, and they actually took the helicopter back just so Lena could sleep on the way.

Kara got the apartment when she joined the dating app--in case someone asked about ‘her place’--but hadn't done more than throw in a bed until she met Lena. What a difference a week makes. She has not only moved in what feels like half of Eliza’s house--all of the game room downstairs--she has for some dumb reason tried to bake a pie and make Lena dinner.

Which is a terrible idea for someone with a different idea of how fast time goes and how hot boiling water is than the person writing the recipes had. Three pep talks and two fire extinguisher batteries later, Alex and Eliza teamed up on her to explain cooking as chemistry.

That worked.

"Kara!" Winn shouts. "Phone!"

"Easy easy easy!" Kara babbles, somehow managing to juggle the pie long enough to get it on the counter in one piece.

_I got moved in to my apartment. Lena's coming over for dinner! I cooked and no one died! This is awesome!_

"Earth to Krypton!" Winn shouts.

He's holding up her cell phone with a shit-eating grin on his face.

"Right, sorry!"

She superspeeds over to grab the phone. It just says 'blocked number'.

"Hello, this is Kara Zor-El."

"Hello. My name is Barack Obama. I need to speak to you, in person."

Kara's phone falls from her hand and skitters across the kitchen floor. She hears the click of a shutter and looks at Winn who is snapping pictures of her no doubt ridiculous face.

"Ahh! Kolex! Call him back!"

 

* * *

 

 

“Mr. Lord,” Lillian demands. “Where are you going?”

_I almost made it out, at least._

“I have a business to run.”

“Your business is with CADMUS now.”

“Is it? Because I didn’t see the part of the contract that included slave collars.”

Lillian motions to two of her goons. They train their weapons on Max’s forehead.

“The whole 1980s Bond villain look doesn’t suit you, Mrs. Luthor. I would talk to your son, if I were you. He’s a practical man with distinct goals in mind. You’re a zealot with nothing but your own hate calling the shots.  That's why he actually made an attempt.”

“Bold words for a man with a gun to his head.”

“You shoot me and six days from now, my lawyer will unload fifty billion in stock at opening bell and thirty billion more at closing _,_ crashing the entire market. Someone is going to look into why that happened and they are going to discover you were the last person I spoke with…” he warns her.

Lillian scowls.

“Leave him,” she tells her men. “He’s a coward.”

His bodyguard opens the Range Rover’s doors.

“No, Lillian. I’m a rational man. You told me that Superwoman was a threat and that Red-K could prove it...that in her heart of hearts she was a butcher, a false god demanding worship. At the time, I shared your concerns.”

“The Red-K failed, Max. Nothing more.”

Max laughs.

“Just because it differs from your notions, doesn’t mean you can discount the evidence. You could see it under her veins in the photos. She fought differently. More brutally. Her inhibitions were reduced. But she did nothing that was a threat to me, my business, my home, or anyone not wearing a military uniform. Hypothesis disproved. Frankly, I’m not interested in repeating an experiment that might make her see me as a threat...or draw any more attention from she-who-wields-the lasso.  I've been given a second chance to live and that means staying in the good graces of goddesses and alien women.”

“I think it’s time I moved on to other projects.  Goodbye, Lillian. Shall I tell Lena you said hello?”

Lillian fumes as he rolls the window up.

His assistant Harry is in the middle seat and Cassie is beside him, her hands folded in her lap. The little slot on her left wrist is open and a fiber-optic cable snakes out of where a human would have an artery. The military-type laptop perched on the bench next to Jacob is a blur of windows opening, YouTube videos and newspaper articles and eBooks and a hundred other things being gobbled into Cassie’s brain while she ‘sleeps’.

“Ah, Lillian. To think you thought your _son_ was the pinnacle of human development,” he scoffs.  "But it's not all about bloodlines, or genes, or even biology."

“I missed you, my darling," he sighs, stroking Cassie’s cheek.

 

 


	18. Look Who's Coming to Dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":  
> Where Kara would marry Lena on the spot if she asks, Lena can't believe a girl likes her, Kara can't believe this girl likes her, Lena needs all the hugs, Eliza Danvers rocks at hugs, Lena is a gamer, no one escapes ABLE, a wild Mason appears and measures Lena's gayness, Kara talks about Krypton, Winn and Kara are big on the internet, Lena gets dragged to E3, a booth babe gets...greedy, Lena channels her mother to keep people from flirting, CADMUS is up to their usual shit, Maggie likes what she sees, Mason ships it, and Eliza has some sad news, Kara just can't with Eliza, Kara needs to be taken care of, Lena has big top energy and the government decides it needs to take a stand on Superwoman which is easier than they thought.
> 
> OUR NEXT EXCITING EPISODE:  
> Where some events in space affect our girls back on Earth, a jailbreak happens, Astra upgrades her relationships, dragons (and other pets) need some TLC, something in her hair frightens Lena, Kara knows how to ride out Lena's feelings, Lena attempts intimidation and Sam uses persuasion, Kara goes full-time at CatCo, Superman returns, and Alex needs something to distract her from some worried feelings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **STYLE GUIDE:**  
>  " _Italics in quotes_ " are foreign languages.  
> " _< Brackets>_" in quotes and italics are passages translated from a foreign language. Some passages I will not translate.  
>  _Italics_ are thoughts or observations and always the POV character.  
> [Brackets] are interactions with artificial intelligence and cybernetics, verbal or non-verbal.  
>  **Bold and prefixed lines** are text messages (example--KDKapow: is Kara's main handle)  
>   
>  **Bold and block-quoted lines** are recorded messages, radio communications, songs or poems, etc.  
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Bold text between horizontal lines indicates notes, emails or or writing.**
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> **REFERENCE GUIDE:**  
>  Please see "For Your Eyes Only" in CODEX for DEO personnel, roles and codenames.  
> Please see "Coursework for a Minor In Alien Studies" in CODEX for information on alien races in the multiverse.  
> Please see "Kryptowiki: Cast and Crew" for a list of all characters. (upcoming)  
> Please see "Kryptowiki: Mechanical's Handbook" for a breakdown of key gear and ships.  
>   
> 

 

###  **July 14, 2006  | Lena Luthor**

National City, California 

Harbor and Third Streets, Starsea Lofts 

Kara’s Apartment 

 

The doorway to Kara’s apartment is terrifying.  White paint on a heavy steel door with a massive deadbolt--the building was once a tool and die companies warehouse--and a little smiley face rendered in plastic flowers.

_I am the daughter of a sociopath and the sister of a megalomaniac mad scientist.  Today alone I’ve had fifteen hundred death threats on Twitter and one actual attempt on my life...and this fucking door scares me._

“Are you out there, Fifi?”

A painting on the wall removes itself, dips twice as if nodding and hangs itself back up.

“Better than nothing,” Lena sighs.

She reaches up to knock and before she can the deadbolt slides from the other side and Kara appears.  Dressed as casually as Lena has ever seen her: blue jeans and a loose button-down men’s shirt. No makeup.  Huge smile. Nothing but a jeweled river of hair marking her as feminine and even that offset by the cropped sides.

“Breathe,” Lena scolds herself.

“Please do.  I want you to feel welcome,” Kara admits.  “My family sort of showed up over here and it would be rude to kick them four hours after they moved me in.  Will you keep me safe?” Kara pleads. “They can be intense. ”

“I doubt that,” Lena snorts.  “But I can handle anything when it comes to family.”

“Not like, supervillian intense.  Like friendly puppies who won’t leave you alone intense.”

“I heard that!” Alex calls out.

“From what I’ve heard Little Danvers say about Lena...woof! woof!” Maggie teases.

Kara gathers Lena up and half guides, half carries her inside.

“Take your shoes off, please.”

“Of course, I’m sure they’re fil-”

“Lena, stop.  Look down.”

Kara wiggles her bare toes and glances to five other pairs of shoes, two of which cannot possibly be hers: a pair of kitten heels and sky-high leather boots.  The military issue boots painted in black-and-gray camo must be Alex’s.

“I thought it was just us,” Lena hisses. “That’s why you had me stuff these _fucking torture devices_ in my cunt all day.”

Kara catches her giggle in her mouth.

“Oh dear!  I just sent those so you had them.  Not that you would wear them at work all day,” she chortles.  “You all right?”

“Yes and no.  I’ve never been so fucking wet in my life...so yes.  You have people here and I’m not straddling your face making you beg...so no.”

Kara blushes--how? how does her skin get any darker?--and reaches into a nearby kitchen drawer.  She holds out a small rod of a clearly alien design and metal and a nine-volt battery.

“This stylus will attract titanium-promethium alloy to it.  Think electromagnet.”

Lena arches an eyebrow.

“I think not, you whore,” Lena growls, fisting her hand in Kara’s mane and dragging her out of sight around the corner.  “You go put _yours_ in.  When I’ve had my way with you, you’ll put them back in tomorrow morning.”

She puts her teeth on Kara’s pulse point and presses down, relishing the pressure she can apply without hurting her.  Kara whines. Whether from the dirty talk, the domination or the suckle Lena doesn’t know and certainly doesn’t care right now.

“Yes, m-m-ma’am,” Kara finally manages.

“Go.”

“We’ll take turns being in charge,” Kara reminds Lena, voice low and eyes fixed on Lena’s.  

No anger to her tone.  It’s not a challenge, just a promise.  A reminder. Sometimes Lena needs to be pulled apart and laid bare, cradled and cupped and stroked and warmed from within.  Sometimes she needs to throw the other woman on the bed and suck and bite and ride until neither of them are breathing. Until she only remembers how to scream and only remembers Lena’s name.

 _It makes sense that in an actual relationship, it would vary._ Lena supposes.  

She makes a note to buy some books on how normal, undamaged people interact, have friends, fall in love, have sex and so on.  Shameful as it is, she needs to learn the concepts before she can do them right.

_Trial and error will not do, not if error costs me her._

“Two powerful women, taking and giving,” Kara promises.  “So that neither of us forgets how precious we are or how sexy and strong we are.  Because no one will ever make you ashamed of you again. So long as I breathe.”

A flash of crimson behind Kara’s eyes--nothing like Superman’s famous heat vision--makes Lena shiver.  Because Kara isn’t Kryptonian like he is, not the polished steel of a statue, a farmboy’s imagining of a shining world he never knew.

This is Kara the exiled princess, the girl who was sent to defend her bloodline from the inhabitants of an entire planet at the age of thirteen.  Her lovely body torn apart with blades and saws and fire and then reforged with the guts of ancient monsters, their hides pitted with defeat and their fangs stained by victory.

_If she is evil--if the Worldkiller takes her over--then I suppose we’re made for each other._

“I love you because you’re a good person,” Kara sighs.  “But the fact that you’re so fierce...so brilliant...a true equal.”

She brushes her cheek past Lena’s to whisper.

“Is an incredible turn-on.”

Another crimson shadow falls across Kara’s eyes and then Lena is staring back into golden irises and half-blown pupils.  This dark goddess called her equal? An irresistible creature with equally irresistible might. Pride and fear course through Lena in equal measure and the resulting full body shudder finally puts her over the top, one of the balls pressing just the right bundle of nerves for just long enough.

Kara must have seen it coming because her hand is cupped over Lena’s mouth before the cry comes out and the other arm is behind her back, hard as stone.  Holding Lena up even when her own bones turn to mush.

Kara plants kisses all over Lena’s cheeks, catching every last tear.

“Shh.  Lena, darling.  Did that help?” Kara asks.

Her eyes sweep Lena’s face like she hopes to find something else she can kiss.

“Shh?  Shh?” Lena demands. “I just embarrassed myself in front of your family.”

“No, you didn’t.  They heard nothing.  I told them you had been through a lot--emotional abuse--and you were shy.  They probably just think you needed a moment.”

Lena opens her mouth to protest that she was not abused...Luthors do not get abused...only to realize that is something Lillian would want her to say.

“Thank you.”

Kara shrugs.

“You’re my woman.  Got to take care of you.”

_Just like that?  Like it was the most ordinary fucking thing to cover up for me with her family?_

Lena is more afraid than ever.  This relationship is deepening fast, veering far outside anything she’s ever experienced.  What she had with Sam was tender but it wasn’t this. Since then her relationships with women have been sex: her taking them and them enjoying it.  Any contentment came from the hook up or the call girl moaning into her mouth.

Lena’s abstract pride in a technical skill.

Even scarier than Kara is her family.  A sort of people she’s never encountered before.  Simple. They seem to think she deserves all this kindness--why? just because she was born?--no matter her last name or her family’s crimes.  They want to care for her, claim her, make her one of their own.

_Is this what Ruby feels like all the time?   It would explain the little shit’s good mood and terrible poker face._

“Lena, take a moment if you need to,” Kara offers, rubbing her shoulders.  “My mom sort of ambushed us. Just showed up, so any amount of time you need, take.  Alex and I can just talk to her. She’ll love you.”

“How can you know that?” Lena demands.

“Because you’re a human being and more than that, you’re someone who needs love.  That’s kind of Eliza’s thing,” Kara explains, tapping her own chest. “Giving simple, honest, unconditional love to people who’ve never had it before.  Me and now you.”

Lena’s not sure how long she stands in the hallway, blinking stupidly at a stretch of blank wall.  Eventually a handkerchief--plain blue linen--is offered to her by a metal hand that disappears into thin air at the wrist.

“Thank you, Fifi.”

“Mitzi, actually.”

“Of course,” Lena laughs.  “How many of you are there here?”

“Fifi and me.  The others are guarding your house, office and your car.  Two, one, one.”

“Long as they don’t change the radio,” Lena jokes.

“I will give them that instruction and have it changed back.”

Taking four deep breaths, Lena steps into the apartment.

Alex and her--girlfriend, apparently--are cuddled on the couch.  Lena had only spoken to Alex on the phone and now she’s faced with the reality:  a thin, toned woman with quick and intense hazel eyes, red hair swept across one side of her head in a near-triangular shape.  If she hadn’t known Alex was a soldier, the muscle definition and the ever-alert posture would give it away. Lena is struck for a moment--awed, really--at Alex’s bravery.  From what she’s heard she’s rising quick in the ranks and occupying a choice posting. Yet here she is--extremely gay--with her civilian girlfriend in her lap and a ear-to-ear grin.

_Guess I know what Alex would sacrifice everything for, besides Kara._

Said girlfriend being Detective Maggie Sawyer, the detective who always seems to be the one on duty when Lena or her people are involved.  Lena needs to ask why that is.

Maggie is cuddled up against Alex--perhaps melted into her--and red cheeked.  It seems Maggie may be coping with a bad arrest with alcohol.

“Thought I recognized a voice, detective.”

Maggie hoists a glass of red wine in salute.

Half asleep in an armchair is a small man with a bow tie, an immaculately pressed shirt and slacks.  As fashion aware as Lex--easily--merely tending more towards youth minister than CEO. A set of gold-rimmed eyeglasses sits next to him in a lucite case that probably would stop a rifle round.  Strangely old-school and unfashionable eyewear for a man as stylish as he is yet clearly important to him.

_Sentimental value.  Probably an heirloom._

“I take it you’re Winn?”

“She’s my favorite!  Kara, did you hear that?  She didn’t ask ‘What’s a Winn?’.  What is a Winn?  Winn is a who, not a what.  Turns out a Winn is me,” he jokes.

“Thanks, Miss Luthor.  Big fan of your work...gadgets and gizmos and general badassery in tech.”

“Why thank you, and it’s Lena, please.”

“Of course.   We should do lunch.  I have some ideas.”

“Oh?”

It’s more polite than inquiring what he can offer her that she can’t build or buy for herself.

“Ever hear of Gestalt Games?” he asks, cracking open an eye.  “Ow. Stupid light. Stupid migraines. Anyway. That’s me and Kara.  And it’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Kara hurries over wearing _goddamned oven mitts_ and draws the shades.  

“I thought you were just napping. I could have closed them, Winn.”

“Thought maybe you wanted a solar boost for when you’re alone with your girl.”

“Wait.  You mean tha-”

“If it looks like it’s a thousand years of computer tech beyond ours…”  Winn teases, “It’s because it is computer tech from a culture that’s been making AIs for a quarter million years.  Since we started painting caves. What is it, Kara?”

“Tier 4 AI.  Just below Kolex...full self awareness felt _wrong_ for something that created monsters people kill for fun.  We’re thinking the next model should be Tier 5 or above. Tier 8 is the pipe dream.  That would mean that ethically, the characters would _be_ a civilization.  Tier 12...that’s the top...is something I can’t even really imagine.”

Lena whistles.

“Would it be terribly  _gauche_ of me to admit I pre-ordered?”

Winn laughs.

“Would your evil stepmother be embarrassed?” he jokes.

“Mortified.”

“Then I think you should be on the testimonials page.  Come with Kara and me to E3 this year.”

Kara nods eagerly.

“You need to let some of your passions out, Lena.  I’m pretty sure you’re nerdy, under all those layers of old money someone wrapped around you like a straightjacket.”

Lena thinks she wants to complain but she snaps her jaw closed and nods.  She definitely did not invite Lillian and if the voice of her head is going to channel Lillian, it wasn’t invited either.

“It’s settled.  It’s in Vegas _again_ so maybe we can get married by Elvis!” Kara squeals.

“She’s joking,” Alex assures Lena.  “Kara wants you to be fully onboard.  If you want some hideous, ten million dollar wedding in Westminster Abbey, that’s what she wants.”

“Elvis would be more rebellious, don’t you think?” Lena muses.

Kara removes one of the oven mitts, kisses Lena’s cheek and says something about pies and checking the meat.  Lena can’t follow the words because a _woman who loves her_ gave her a peck on the cheek like it was something they did every morning before work and is cooking her food because she wants to.  

It’s surreal.

Lena feels the blush rising up her face.  Winn’s wisecrack about Kara needing her energy was mild but Kara in an apron that says ‘Kiss the Alien’ and a pair of oven mitts is _affecting._

The offer had been home cooked dinner, Netflix and cuddling but Lena hadn’t imagined Kara would cook for her.  She was expecting artfully unboxed takeout. The whole image is too much. Somehow the sight of Kara in work clothes making her home hospitable to Lena  dredges up dreams she killed--cruelly--when the depths of Lillian’s madness became clear.

_How can Kara want me, when she has this family already and could have any man or woman, build whatever beautiful family she wants?_

“I know that look,” Kara mutters.

Lena is up off her feet and perched on the center island of the kitchen so quickly she assumes superspeed was involved.  Kara’s forehead is pressed to her own and warm fingers cup both Lena’s cheeks.

“You should not be ashamed of yourself.  Because I’m not ashamed of you.”

“Why do you want me?” Lena croaks.

“You kidding?  A brilliant, accomplished, _cagey_ woman?  You’re amazing.  Back on Krypton, I would be fighting my way through _armies_ of suitors.  You are the sort of woman I dreamed of marrying when I was a girl!  Just...met you a planet or two later.”

“What was Krypton like?” Lena asks.  “Lex’s notes tend toward the...tactical.”

Kara releases one of Lena’s cheeks.

“It was amazing.  There was a mountain range I could see from my bedroom, all of it quartz.  Translucent. Sunset came through it like stained glass. There was a waterfall of fire and Mom and I went to an old friend to borrow these dragons, basically so we could ride past it.  It wealthy and beautiful and lazy,” Kara says. “Genetic diseases were eliminated tens of thousands of years before I was born. I was enhanced before birth.  Tuned to have a reduced fear response, increased muscles, an analytical mind, an knack for language and social interactions.  All choices my scientist and lawyer parents and my soldier aunt made on a tablet in the medical centers.”

“My appearance is pulled from the traits of six generations of female ancestors applied to a baseline of some of Krypton’s legendary beauties of old.”

_You don’t say._

“I knew you were too gorgeous to be an accident, Kara.”

Kara laughs.

“I suppose.  More of a quilt my family took pride in.”

_Quilt?  Sure, Kara.  Just make it even more confusing to be standing here with you and your family that Normal Rockwell would think was too cute._

“When I was a little girl, I studied mysteries and made machines that I can’t describe to you…not yet.  I would have to teach you how to think first, so you could ask the question. Fourteen great families ruled nations in their home territories and when it came to the Council, we spoke as one.  We stared across a few thousand kilometers at Daxam, our sister planet. Our enemy. When Daxam attacked us and we called for help, a thousand of our colonies answered, ten thousand more from our allies.”

Kara sighs, her eyes dropping to Lena’s face.

“Within a month of being on Earth, I realized just how messed up it was.  My aunt Astra,” Kara begins.

“...in Rao’s Light may she rest,” she quickly adds in a whisper, eyes squeezed shut.

“Was one of the best scientific minds we produced in centuries.  But the Science Guild felt it would be unseemly to have both my father and his sister in law in with them, so she was sent to the Military Guild, her second-best scores.”

“Guilds were…” Lena prompts.

“Lifelong employment, good pay, and no career switches.  She could have been transferred to research projects but never to an actual lab. Any person employed on Krypton worked for a Guild.  There were no other employers.”

“Back home, at sixteen cycles of age, I would have been matched by computer with three, perhaps four suitors, male and female.  Chosen one among them. Quite likely it would have included Falar and Kunne Ta-Zod from House Zod. Old rivals but it was time to fix it...so the Council would tempt me into marrying one of the twins.  For life. For our entire, disease free, genetically extended lives.”

“Here, on Earth, I have to make money to eat and because I’m an alien I have the same civil rights as that hairpin does,” Kara sighs, pulling it out of Lena’s hair and shaking it free.

Lena sits stunned and wordless as Kara gets closer--impossibly, it already felt like Lena was inside Kara’s skin--and takes in Lena’s scent.  Kara rubs Lena’s hair between her fingers.

“Here I can’t go to a public hospital because they don’t fucking exist for some moronic reason but I can choose.  Your way is dangerous and dirty and it’s not fair to people who can’t do what I can do or make enough money.”

“You all have got work to do,” Kara complains, hands on hips.

Lena chuckles, wiping a tear.

“But it’s more free.”

Kara locks eyes with Lena, the fire gone from her golden eyes.  Replaced with...something. Hope? Fear? Pleading?  She puts her hands back on Lena's face, cradling her and denying Lena the chance to shy away.

“I can spend my life with a brilliant, beautiful, brave woman,” Kara murmurs.

Lena’s in pieces now, all composure destroyed, crying into Kara’s palms.

“Not because it fulfills some social need or mends some feud but because because I want to.  Because it makes me happy,” she whispers before turning Lena’s back to face her. “Because I’m a better person when I’m with her.”

Maggie has somehow crept up on them.

“Dude, wear a bell!” Kara snaps.  “Having a moment here.”

“I can see that,” Maggie replies, smirking.  “But I know that look...Catholic guilt. Right?”

“I don’t know," Lena gulps.  "I don’t think I am.”

Maggie reaches into her shirt and pulls out her crucifix.

“After what my father did, there's only pieces left.  But what they teach you never leaves you. And it hurts like a motherfucker, Kara.  The shame gets to a point where it’s _physical_ pain.”

“I wasn’t raised that way but my birth mother was Catholic,” Lena whispers.  

“All the memories I have of her are happy. I started praying again recently...when _this one,”_ she glares at Kara.  “Nearly got herself killed.”

She reaches up to fondle the worn-smooth beads of hickory wood around her neck.  “This was hers.”

“Oh, Lena.  Honey. That’s a rosary you wear on your wrist,” Maggie chortles.  “That’s why it’s like a choker on your neck. Besides, if your birth mother was Irish, it’s damn near genetic.  Take if from the Italian. And if you’re serious, I know a non-jackass priest or two. You'd be welcome.”

“Here, let me fix that.”

Maggie takes the rosary off and wraps it around Lena’s wrist before tugging her blouse back over it.

“Thank you.”

“Kara, is this her?”

Lena’s eyes snap open and she looks over to see a woman with thinning silver hair with a handful of blonde shot through it.  Her eyes are like Alex’s and her height and similarly thin build leave only one possibility.

“Mrs. Danvers.”

“Eliza, honey.”

“Eliza.”

“Move, Kara.”

“Fine, _mom.”_

“Whiner,” Eliza quips.

Eliza puts her arms around Lena and _holds_ her.  Lena's family never hugged--maybe Lex, once or twice when he could get away with it--so she never knew it's power.  It's as if Eliza's hands on her back are filling her chest, creating warmth from nothing.

“I’m so sorry that you’ve had it so rough,” she whispers.  “You’ve been treated in ways no one should ever treat anyone.  You’re family now, Lena. No matter what happens.”

_Kara wasn’t exaggerating.  Eliza wants to claim me. Thirty seconds after laying eyes on me she’s offering to what...be a mother to me?_

“What if it doesn’t work out?” Lena worries, glancing at Kara.

“My youngest is _determined_ and _reckless_ and _smart._ When she screws up, she makes note of it. She will bang her head on a problem until she solves it.  So if she needs to make something up to you, my money’s her making it up to you.   I think she has a positive effect on you. As her mother I can assure you that you have a good effect on her.  Your chances are above average.”

Eliza sighs.

“Actually, as long as you _let_ yourself forgive her, Kara will find a way to be worthy of that forgiveness.  She will make herself worth it, even if she fails at first. It amazes me that after all she’s been through, all that awfulness, Kara still finds ways to be happy and to make others happy. She seeks out silly things, tells jokes.”

“But even if you broke up,” Eliza muses.

Kara blinks tears back at the mere mention of it.

“Things would change.  But we will never shun you.  Family is like that, Lena.”

“Kara, why don’t you help her get down and we can eat?” Eliza suggests, carrying the last two plates to the table.

Lena hadn’t really looked down before.  The island here is taller than the stove by most of a foot.  Getting down, especially in five inch heels, would be tricky.

“Previous family had dogs, so they needed this to be taller,” Kara explains.

“Ah.”

“Let me get these off you, speaking of torture devices.”

One at a time, Kara removes Lena’s heels, dragging her nails far further up the calf than necessary and putting runs in her stockings.

Kara stands up and gets her hands under Lena, who tries hard not to think about Kara’s hands being on her _ass_ while these sex toys made of _fucking space magic_ push and slide through her, teasing her whenever she shivers and making every step a blast of flame in her belly.  Despite all the tenderness, Kara somehow manages to shift Lena just enough to give her a tiny flicker of an orgasm on the way to the dining room.  Lena’s jaw is sore from biting Kara’s shoulder against the scream.

 

 

“So, Eliza.  You’re a biologist?”

“Evo/Devo, specifically.”

“Evolution and development,” Kara whispers.

“So, that must have been fun for Kara,” Lena teases.  “How many times did you ask her what missing link led to this strange visitor from another planet?  Kara made it sound like there weren’t any other--I guess mammals---on her planet, or not many. So...there’s a story there.”

She can tease this woman and Kara doesn’t snap or complain, she smiles.  Kara shrinks in her seat and Lena worries she crossed a line but Alex is laughing into her glass of wine and Maggie’s face is all mischief.

“Smallpredatorybird,” Kara squeaks out.  “Withhandslikesomedinosaurshad.”

“Smart little hunter with feathers, huh?  Is that why you describe _flying_ in a way that sounds like doing a cocktail of LSD, ecstasy and cocaine?” Lena prods.

“It’s more like the first time you kiss somebody,” Kara muses.  “Or when you jump off a swing or sled down a hill. That little moment when your insides lift up, like you’re floating but only on the inside.  Because you're scared to do it but more scared to not try it.”

“You really see it in the paintings Kara made,” Alex observes.  “From stories about the warlord days. There’s this way the Butcher Queen _looked_ at people...like an eagle spotting a rabbit.”

“I didn’t know you painted, Kara.”

“Therapist suggested it when I was a kid.  I think he still believes I’m making Krypton up.”

“S’true,” Maggie adds.  “She’s good, too. This is amazing, Lena.”

Much as Lena had suspected, Maggie has gone full soft butch.  She changed into a T shirt, leather jacket and tight jeans after showering, took a beer rather than another glass of wine and  eating the filet violently, all slicing and stabbing with a fork. It’s reminiscent of alpha-male businessmen Lena has dealt with since she was twelve.

It’s cute when Maggie does it.

“What about you, Alex?  Kara said you did medical school--Johns Hopkins, no less--but no residency.”

Alex rubs the back of her neck.

“I wanted to be a soldier and somehow they were willing to pay that stupid expensive tuition as long as my ‘residency’ was delayed for my first tour at least.”

“I knew you were Army and I thought maybe you were covert operations but how did you end up in the DEO?” Lena asks.

“Oh boy,” Maggie mutters.

“Who wants which pie?” Kara blurts out.

“Alex…” Eliza warns.

Alex’s fists close momentarily around the table cloth before she composes herself.

“First.  Assume that all this  _stays right here_ or I have some powerful people muck up your plea agreement.  Second. How do you know about the DEO, Lena?”

Lena shrugs.

“Lex knew the program existed.  Honestly, I only figured out about you today.  It seemed odd that you were so _eager_ to hear about Lex’s base, unless it somehow directly tied to your mission.  That and the fact that Maggie seems to be assigned to me or my case and is dating you…and Detective Sawyer also seems to show up on the news whenever aliens attack.”

Alex sighs, rubbing her temples.

“You realized that the commonality of those things was aliens or an interest in them.”

Lena tips her scotch to Alex.  Which is from a bottle of criminally unopened Laphroaig that passed to Kara from her father.  Kara has things to learn.

“What else do you know?” Alex demands.

“I know that Lex preferred to avoid the DEO so pat yourselves on the back.  There were other groups, ones I never got as much about, that he did want to work with.  When I was an informant, I was working off memory. I can remember anything about them, you’ll get it.”

“I think the other groups exchanged specimens and tech with my mother.”

Alex and Kara groan at once.

“More bad guys?” Alex groans.  “I already have one CIA group we can’t pin trying to knock us out.  My trigger finger is getting tired.”

Kara scoots her chair back.

“Lena, could you come with me?  I need to make a phone call.”

“All right.”

Kara leads them into the bedroom which is currently a bed, with a sinfully comfy looking duvet, a mostly-empty wheeled rack of clothing and a small mountain of throw pillows.  The beanbag chairs in what looks like...corduroy...are the most Kara thing in the entire room.

“Kolex, mute the doorway and isolate all electromagnetics except my phone.”

“I will have to drop cloaking to generate adaptive interference, Lady Kara.”

“Do it.”

A floating metal torso with four arms and a teardrop-shaped head appears beside Kara.  Small plates on the arms slide back and a veritable bouquet of antennas and broadcast dishes poke out into the room.

“Jesus Christ!” Lena exclaims.  The sudden appearance of a crazy looking robot not two feet from her face knocks all the air out of her lungs and she can’t seem to get more.

Kara rushes over to her, throws her arms around her and rubs her back, humming what sounds like part of a song.  The panic attack fizzles almost immediately.

“I’m so sorry, baby.  He’s always here when I’m home and...I forget that people who haven’t met him freak out.  Which is wrong.”

Kara nestles her cheek against Lena’s.

“I care about your feelings more than anyone else in the world, Lena.  Please believe that.”

“You’re giving me care that I usually have to check myself into a hospital for, so I believe it.”

Lena gulps in air.  It’s easy to breathe with Kara’s arms around her.  Just like it was easy to face Lillian and to accuse her of abuse when she could hide behind Kara’s broad back and dig her fingers into the muscles that buffered her from her mother.

“Can I just wear your arms everywhere?” Lena pleads.  “I don’t have to worry that my stress will choke me to death, as long as you hold me.”

Kara’s lips curl into a smile.

“That is definitely the end goal.  The trick is that I need them so I need to figure out a way to keep you in my arms and just walk around.”

“Just the arms wouldn’t do much good,” Lena agrees.

Kara holds out her phone with a group video call pulled up.

“Earlier this year, I created a group called ABLE.  Allies for a Better Life for Extraterrestrials. I’d like to bring you into it.  We don’t have anyone who’s great with economics or business or who can help us navigate the corporate world.”

“You want me,” Lena sputters. “Member of the most notoriously racist...speciesist?...family ever to help you help aliens?”

Kara nods.

“Of course.  I doubt the DEO is ready to bring you in yet but this is a student activist group...that my ex started as a birthday present for me.  I’m sort of mascot-president, president-mascot. Hard to say. So I say you’re in, you’re in. Remind me, what were you doing in Iran?  Emilia seems to think it was...I think her words were ‘brave, stupid, amazing’ what you were doing. Vigilante, that’s the DEO’s liaison with the FBI, seems to agree.”

Lena scoffs.

“I think in my head, I was getting revenge on my mother and trying to drag my brother back into something resembling sanity.”

“Both good goals, Lena.  But I think you knew it would benefit to Earth’s aliens in the process.  Every second you took your mother’s attention away could be the second she kills someone on the operating table.  And you took away _a lot_ of seconds.”

Lena swallows.

“All right.  It can’t be any more crazy than your mom hugging me and telling me I deserve better.”

Kara frowns.

“Sweetheart,” Kara lisps, richly and sloppily as Humphrey Bogart ever did, “a classy dame like you deserves the world.”

“So we’ve got Jack, he’s a clown.  Does our internet sites, blogs, so on and has a scraper running on the web and dark web to look for any indication of recent landings or crashes.  He may ask you if your great-great-grandfather shot Lincoln because conspiracy theories are his hobby.”

“Mason, who is a biology prof...and the most _amazing_ person.  Funny, gay as hell, life of the party at any game night or bad movie night.  Their partner is closeted so when they go out together, Mason always presents male.  Which is really sweet and with their skill level, seamless. So they help aliens blend in and get dressed for job interviews and learn how to present themselves in the gender, style, and personality they want to.  Harder than it sounds.”

“Fatima is a theology student and she does our cultural blog and I guess ‘sells’ alien religions to humans to make them approachable.”

“And lastly, my ex Nadia who is chief troublemaker, lobbyist and protest starter.”

She presses dial.

“Huh.  Nadia’s not answering.  My ex. Maybe the woman she’s rooming with really was sweet on her and they’re out on a date.”

“Is this line clean?” Jack whispers.

“Kara, always a pleasure.”

“Hello, Fatima.”

“Bitch, where you been?” Mason jokes, her voice a whisper.

“I mean, I was getting more straight-woman-looking by the second, what without brunch dates with you and your sexy muscles.  Horrifying. Unsexy.”

“I’m sure Jenna disagrees,” Kara shoots back.  “Unless she’s in a dark room behind you, seemingly naked, for...science reasons?”

“There’s a whole story there,” Mason admits, panning the camera slightly so that Kara and Lena can see another bed pulled up right beside it with two more sleeping forms, not exactly human.

“I’m taking you and...sexy business vampire into the kitchen, all right?  Sexy business witch? Sexy business faerie queen?”

Lena holds up her hand.

“That will be enough, young lady.”

“Young lady?  Oof.  I don’t like her, Kara.”

“Tough.  Because I do.”

“So is she your…” Fatima stalls.

 _Is she Muslim?_ Lena wonders.  A name is no guarantee, after all.   _Does she not approve?_

“Yes.”

“She looks shy...and rich.  My father would be so happy if I married a rich man,” Fatima jokes.

“Er, right.  So guys, this is Lena Luthor.”

“Oh.”

“Oh wow!  I have so many questions!” Jack squeals.  “Do you guys really have a new camera that can bypass air-gapping by strobing the touchscreen with infrared?”

Lena shakes her head.  “What?”

“Something called the TR-4000.  I read about it.”

“That’s a digital camera, far as I know.  It’s for people who think their phone cameras aren’t good enough.  I mean, it does have an IR array to line up sho-” Lena admits before trailing off.  

“Huh.  That’s a really good question.  Not the intended use certainly but...anything can be misused.  I’ll make them check.”

“She’s smart and she values honesty,” Fatima notes.

“She’s also loaded and would have her tongue down Kara’s throat--throat if we’re _lucky_ \--if this wasn’t a video call,” Mason observes.

“You should keep her,” Fatima and Mason say in near unison.

“Anyway guys, I’m really just calling to say two things.  First, we’re going to ask Lena for help sometimes when our work comes up against business.  She’s the CEO of L-Tech and is actually thinking of going private, whatever that means. So she swims that shark tank.  Knows how to talk to people with more money than morals.”

“Second, I want to warn you guys that there is at least one government group _not_ run by the Army and not good guys.  CIA is our best guess. As of the end of this call, we’re not using Earth tech.  I’m not kidding. We need tougher encryption. Jack, I’m going to mail you some gear.  New servers, internet links, transmitters, so on.”

“Use it...and use _only_ it for ABLE business.  No excuses.  Jack, I can send you circuit diagrams but you cannot be paranoid about this.  You trust me and I built it so trust the gear. Everyone else I’m sending a communication device and a multitool.  I’ll put some instructions in the packages.”

“Sort of a,” Kara pauses.  “Thousand-in-one screwdriver.  Wear it on your wrist as often as you can.  It can turn invisible if needed. Obviously the communicator is like a cell phone.  You can use it for other things if you want, long as it is where you do ABLE. Ditch your main phone if you like, I can help you set it up as a clone.  It can tap into the towers. It’s flexible so you leave it phone shaped or can curl it into a bracelet or even a small necklace, I guess.”

“Everyone all right with that? ABLE cannot be the weak point that this group uses to get at someone.  We think they’re into kidnaps, cages, dissections. Bad as it gets.”

Everyone nods.

“It’s an honor to meet you all, truly.  I don’t...don’t usually meet people who believe in things out of the goodness of their hearts,” Lena sighs.

Fatima and Jack nod and sign off.  It’s nearly three AM where Jack is and late tomorrow afternoon for Fatima visiting her relatives.

“Luthor.  If you want to date my bestie, going to need to give you a quiz.  Assess your gayness. What you wear when you just don’t give a fuck about getting dressed in the morning, opinion on workout selfies, favorite music, favorite superhero...and go.”

“Well, let’s see.  I mean, now that my mother’s a fugitive?  Now that she can’t come in and slap me?  Novelty t-Shirt and boyshorts or else just a robe, I suppose.”

Kara makes a small whining sound.

“ _Her_ workout selfies?” Lena asks, jerking her head towards Kara.  "The ones she started taking because I asked her to?"

Mason nods.

“Religious experience.  Favorite music is jazz, blues or swing...I know, I know, it’s not that gay.”

“Bunch of the singers were,” Mason reminds her.

“Fair point,” Lena admits.

“Wonder Woman.”

Kara’s face falls.

“What?  When I was twelve, my electric toothbrush and I didn’t know _you existed,_ ” she reminds Kara.  “You never forget your first but I...I think I’m upgrading.  It was usually the banister, come to think about it. A piece broke off one summer and I managed to snag it, sand it and finish it so it was skin safe.  African ironwood. Still have it.”

“Lena checks out, Kara.  Your lesbian starter kit is in the mail.”

“Excuse me!” Lena snaps.  “Her lesbian is _right fucking here_  and Kara is no starter!Cheeky tart.”

Mason laughs half a cup of tea all over themselves.

“British slang?  Bit of an Irish brogue?  Temper?  Wife her, Kara.  Immediately. I’m going to go see if anyone needs a snuggle or a suckle. Good night, ladies.”

Mason hangs up.

“Yeah…” Kara sighs, bouncing on the balls of her feet and rubbing the back of her neck.  “So, those are my friends.  That’s ABLE. I’m sure Nadia will be glad to meet you.”

“Really?”

“She installed a dating app on my phone when I wasn’t looking.  Day we broke up. I switched to Raya because Cat Grant has a no-Tinder-in-the-building policy and because apparently, I’m financially successful.”

“Ow!” someone calls out behind them.

Eliza has grabbed a broom and is tapping on the force field Kolex erected.

“Kolex, drop the field and give my mother a hug.”

“Understood."

“Kara…” Eliza complains.  “Your robot is hugging me.”

“Science experiment.  Trying to see if two extra arms are needed to be on your hug level.”

Eliza chuckles.  When Kolex release her, she seems unable to meet Kara’s eyes for some reason.

“Alex, can you come in here?  Maggie too!” Eliza hollers.

Alex and Maggie appear, more than a bit disheveled.  Eliza flicks some of Alex’s sweaty hair back behind her ears.

“First off, let me say I am _so happy_ to see my babies in love...and falling in love.”

Eliza caught Lena’s panicked gasp and gave her some wiggle room.

“It makes the rest of this,” Eliza shivers.  “Easier.”

“I have cancer.  Brain cancer, towards the back.  It’s already been hit with chemo and some of the new drugs.  It’s not getting bigger, maybe ever, or not getting big faster at least...and I'm still me.  I have between one and three years.”

Alex says nothing, not at first.  Kara drops to her knees with a wail and Lena gets down beside her.

“I...I can’t, mom.  I can’t lose anyone else,” Kara moans.  “I’ve lost _everyone_ but you guys and if another awful thing happens to me, I’m scared that I’ll just _stop feeling_ things.  And me not feeling things is someone I’m terrified of.”

Lena cards her fingers in Kara’s hair and presses her forehead to Kara’s temples.  There’s no way she knows what the right thing to say is, not with her upbringing, but she can hold her.

“You’re not going to let me fight it for you, are you, mom?”

Eliza shakes her head.

“You’re choosing to die!” Kara shrieks.  “None of you have to die. I have programmable nanites that can eat tumors and chrysalis chambers and neuron-transfer interfaces and tissue lathes.  You don’t have to die...any of you...ever.”

 _She was serious about that,_ Lena realizes.   _I'd better get out in front of her before a heartbroken Kara tries to end death._

“Kara, sweetie.  I know you'll do amazing things.  But all parents leave their children someday.  Besides...it’s my choice, isn’t it?”

Kara nods.

“Strange as it sounds,” Eliza says, mostly to the ceiling.  “I'm all right with it.  Even stranger, I loved your father.  When we were together, I looked forward to those moments when he looked up from his work every other month. I know we prayed to different ideas of the Lord but...I hope I’ll see him.  And in the meantime, you are not allowed to mope about this young lady!”

A dark, angry look crosses Alex’s eyes.

_Kara says Alex loved her father...so why the freak-out at the mention of his name?_

“Moping can happen _after_ I die.  Until then I want to see these amazing women I raised, or half raised,” she admits.

“You raised me, Eliza.  The way I was on Krypton, that girl?  She would never have survived here.  You had to teach me things an infant would know. Full credit.”

“As I was saying,” Eliza prods.  “I want to see my two amazing daughters live and love and grow and be happy.  Because if I have that, it won’t hurt.”

“I’ll try, mom.” Kara sniffles.

“Thanks, baby.”

“You two,” Eliza says, pointing between Maggie and Alex.  “If slash when you get married, I will be there. Understand?”

“Mom, I can’t even promise we _can get married,”_ Alex protests.  “There’s like six laws preventing it and DADT.”

“You let your mom worry about that.  That’s a mother’s job.  To make the world _love_ her children.  And we’ve got some ideas.”

“Who’s we?” Alex asks.

“Hmm?  I have no idea what you’re talking about.  Must be chemo brain.”

Alex huffs.

“Kara, sweetie, Maggie and I are going to head home. If you need us, either of you, call.”

Eliza kisses Alex’s forehead and then Maggie’s.

“Kara, sweetie, I’ll be in town another two days for a consult.  You two...the girlfriends, are coming home with my daughters for Yom Kippur and any other holidays.   _Capiche_?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I would be honored to see how non-sociopaths celebrate holidays,” Lena admits.

Eliza smiles.

“We do our best.  Lena, do me a favor?  Hold her. When it’s bad, Kara needs touch to ground her.  Let’s talk again in the morning. One of those newfangled video calls.”

 

* * *

 

**July 14, 2006 | Jennifer Hepler (Real Person:  formerly Bioware Studios writer)**

Montreal, Canada

Bioware Montreal

 

> [Author’s note #1:  In our timeline in 2006, both Mass Effect and Dragon Age’s first games would have been in development.  It is one element of the timeline I did not change. Jennifer Hepler was a high-level writer for Bioware, especially on Dragon Age.  She quit after a barrage of Gamergate abuse in 2013.  Bioware at its best is a writer’s room with a video game company attached, so this is Kara’s little toy giving Jennifer the power as the person who dreams up stuff rather than the power being the person who figures out how much each triangle costs.]
> 
> [Author’s note #2:  They really did just shorten The Dragon Age Setting into T.H.E.D.A.S and finally “Thedas” as the name of the world.]
> 
> [Author’s note #3:  The executive from EA here is a jackass but he is a jackass by job role too.  His job is to be concerned about revenue, piracy, industrial espionage. So assign whatever morality you will to him.]

 

Jennifer whips the headset off her head, panting.  Everyone around the conference table is staring at her with baited breath.  The Gestalt kit has been floating office to office for _days_ and it took some credible threats from Casey Hudson to get it into the conference room for a day.

“Well?” Casey asks.

“Gimme a minute, Case.”

Jennifer takes the glass of water with still-shaking fingers.

“I ran through our demos,” she exhales.  “It was _fucking amazing._ In the middle ages one--we name that yet?”

Her right-hand guy, Jack, just laughs.

“Right now it’s still The Dragon Age Setting.”

“The...hmm…” Jenn stalls, drumming her fingers on the table.  Thedas!”

Jack whistles.

“That works.  Good one, skipper.”

“Anyway, in that one I picked the elven background and…remember the cutscene where we had the merchant?”

Everyone nods.

“I told the system it was an elven village, dropped in maybe a half-page of tidbits about the Dalish and told it ‘I was ready to wake up’.  There isn’t a UI at all. It gets all fuzzy, like a dream sequence. Then it whispers what you want and you tell it.”

“I wake up and there’s two little children--children we _never wrote--_ playing some kind of hopscotch type thing outside my tent.  The merchant offers me something she thinks will look nice on my ears and holds out a mirror.  When I started the first quest, the locals _expanded_ on the ghost story we set up.  When the mirror attacked me, I think I peed a little,” she jokes.

“As far as the space one...I think I’m in love with the space chicken thingies.  Also, did we ever make a female model for them?”

“Turians?  Nope. Never bothered for them or the Krogan.”

“We have one of each now, the Turian one is _cute_ , and we have at least four new Asari body types and it extrapolated some new emotes based on their face rigging.  Check the screenshot logs.”

Appreciative whistles zip around the table.

“Amazing,” Casey muses.  “I’ll have to see what Mac thinks but this could be _exactly_ our cup of tea.”

The room seems to chill a few degrees when the representative for EA comes in.

“Here comes the mini-boss,” Jack mutters.

“What are you doing with this thing?  We can’t sell anything we build on that...licensing is a nightmare and piracy is just saying ‘make me this’.  It’s a box of crayons,” he sneers.

“Someone will steal everything, just like those cosplayers at the alien rights marches stole your designs for the sex aliens or whatever they’re called.”

“Asari,” Jack grumbles.  “And mindfuckingly weird as it is, that’s a coincidence.  Given that one of those folks lives in my building and when she cut herself on the mailbox, _she bled orange jelly_ , I think that’s just a case of art imitating life.”

Casey holds out the bodysuit and headset to the executive.

“Put it on.  Spin up Jennifer’s last save point,” Casey instructs him.  “And tell me that _anything_ you could pay us to build holds a candle to that.  We’ll wait.”

Excited chatter fills the room while the Gestalt seduces the executive.

“So, when he gets out, we’re going to need an idea.  We need to make it ours.”

“Dungeons and Dragons model,” Jennifer says after a few seconds.

“They don’t _own_ the game, just the trademark.  They sell book full of rules and spreadsheets, for Christ’s sake.   They make millions. With this thing, costs plummet. We don’t code and we don’t do much of the artwork.  We would need concept artists and modelers, some high-level guys to hash out the mechanics. I vote we keep the voice actors.  Testers. But no line coders. In theory, we could skip the artwork and let users describe what they want it. The full-on quizzes in a new environment are a bit stilted.” 

“So, we publish a _History of the Fifth Blight_ or a _Legends of the Grey Wardens…_ ” she suggests.  “Some fluff text and a chapter or two that the user can read in, verbatim, with the external mic.  Add the logic tree for the networking code. When they boot it up, they’re all in the same place.”

The executive knocks himself out of the chair and Casey hurries over.

“What...the _fuck_...was that thing?  It was like a zombie made of tinfoil!”

“Husk.  Baseline enemy in _Mass Effect._ The sci-fi title.”

“And this…” the exec points at the dimly glowing sphere of processors hooked to the bodysuit.  “Made it up based on a snapshot of a pencil sketch?”

Casey nods.

“Once I laid in the pieces, I described the level out loud and it built it,” Jennifer adds.  “Fed in the voice samples for it to do on-the-fly faking of any edge cases in conversations.”

“We’re screwed.  There’s no competing with that thing.”

“No, there’s not.  But when they invented television, people didn’t try to invent smell-o-vision,” Casey reminds him.

“They did,” Jack butts in.

“But it flopped.  Inventing another _gadget_ wasn’t the important thing.”

The executive gulps.

“Right.  At that point, writing was where the money is.  Get started. I want something I can take to the C-Suite.  If we come up with _something_ , maybe we won’t go the way of the dinosaurs.”

He pauses on his way out.

“And Casey?  See if you can get in touch with the group that built it.  Figure out who ‘Specs’ and ‘Blackbird’ are, who we can mail checks to.  Maybe we can get some kind of deal. Engraved special edition hardware...something.”

 

* * *

 

**July 15, 2006 | Kara Danvers**

National City, California 

Harbor and Third Streets, Starsea Lofts 

Kara’s Apartment 

 

Eliza is smiling at Kara from a makeshift ‘bed’ in the lawn chairs out back. Her breathing slowing, stalling, failing. Kara’s ears catch each scrape and crackle of her heart...and then hear nothing. Eliza catches fire and her bubbling skin gives off vile green smoke.

“You killed me, Kara. You let your mother die.”

A knife plunges into Kara from behind, jutting out through her ribs. She coughs up black slime shot through with the same sickly green filth.

Kara spins.

“Like you killed everyone.”

“Alex?”

Alex twists the knife.

“You let me die, and mother die, and Maggie die. You killed Lena on your wedding night.  But what’s one more death?” Alex sneers.  “For the girl who cannot die?”

The whole word burns and Kara is drifting alone in a field of hot rocks, staring up at a pair of dying stars. One yellow. One red.

 

 

Kara jerks upright.

_“Nang ep spukst haantaa!”_

_< "Mother, you must stay!" | Ajatkar | ancient language common in the Juru Valley since tribal era of "War Queens" and among traditionalist members of House Ina-Zenn.>_

Kara jerks upright.

“Unh,” Lena groans. “That hurt.”

“No, no, no!” Kara moans. “Lena? Answer me.”

_The dream was right. I hurt her! Did I break her neck?_

Lena grab’s Kara’s hand.

“Shh...baby. You just startled me. Also, my head falling from your breasts onto your abs is like sliding off the bed onto a concrete floor,” Lena jokes.

“Nightmare?”

Kara nods.

“About losing your mother?”

“Yeah. And you and Alex and Maggie. So the entire human race, far as I care.”

“That’s not what will happen.”

“Isn’t it? In a yellow star system, I don’t age, I heal anything that doesn’t kill me...so I either kill _myself_ when I lose the last of my friends, or I live to watch the sun burn out. Then wander off to the next star, to ruin a few more lives.”

Lena takes one of Kara’s thumbs into her mouth, twirling her tongue around it.

“Feel that, Kara? Focus. Feel my pulse on my tongue. I’m here. My heart is beating. My blood is warm. I’m alive.”

Kara sniffs.

“I know.”

“Do you really want to spend your life with someone who will always look twenty fucking years old? People sneering at you when your hair goes gray--still beautiful, I’m sure--and mine doesn’t? The neighbors talking?”

Lena laughs softly and her cheek moves maddeningly against Kara’s skin.

“You slipped some flattery in with all the fear, you realize that, right?”

Kara sucks in an unsteady breath.

“Have to. You will be amazing when you’re older, Lena. I’m sure of it.”

“What if I get cataracts? You seem fixated on my eyes!”

“Then you go from faerie queen to all knowing witch of the wilds. Ow!”

“Ah-ha! So some parts of you _do_ feel pain.”

“All of me feels. Pleasure, too. Just because your teeth don’t bruise my skin didn’t mean I didn’t feel that bite in the hallway yesterday.”

“Did you?” Lena begins, unsure if she dares to say it. “Did you put in yours? To get even from the _torture_ of working all day with these things inside me?”

Kara laughs.

“Yeah...right after you asked. I was planning on spending all night on my knees with your legs draped over my shoulders. The news about Eliza distracted me. Before I fell asleep, I pulled the larger ones out of you so it wouldn’t hurt. Traded them.”

“So…” Lena muses. “That’s why I feel tender. So if I were to sort of _push_ gently.”

Lena’s hand glides under Kara’s jeans--neither had the energy to change clothes--and she shoves the palm of her hand into Kara’s mound. Sleep-loosened muscle gives way under Lena’s assault until her sheath yields.  Lena’s fingers push nerve endings against the balls and Kara’s world disappears in a flash of white fire that spreads out from her belly and into her brain.

“Lena!” Kara wails. “More.”

“More?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm. I think you owe me, first.”

“I do,” Kara gulps. “Turn around. Get on top of me. Put this…”

Kara squeezes Lena’s clothing-wrapped pussy, savoring Lena’s whine.

“Where I can get to it. I want to taste you. Was this expensive?”

She taps the zipper on Lena’s slacks.

“I-I-I can afford to replace it,” Lena gulps.

“Good.”

Kara fists one hand in the back of the slacks and one in the blouse. She pulls hard, knowing that the fabric will tear if she’s brutal enough. Linen and silk are shredded and flung to the side and she moves her hand to repeats the process with the underwear.

Lena hisses her approval and arches her back.

“You really were hoping, weren’t you?” Kara jokes, tapping her finger on Lena’s hips. “Bright red, wispy little things. You wanted this, I can tell.”

“Save those,” Lena pleads. “Don’t rip them. They’re my good luck charm.”

“Night we met?”

“Yes,” Lena breathes.

“Well, since you asked so nicely.”

Kara’s fingers fumble through the clasps on the bra.

“Really?”

“I don’t usually wear fancy stuff with this sort of clasp. Neither did the woman I’ve been with.”

“Woman, singular?”

She finally manages and tosses the bra aside on the bedside lamp.

“Yeah. I haven’t actually been with many people.”

“Now these,” Kara murmurs, grabbing Lena’s hips and pulling her close. “Will be a bit trickier.”

She hooks her tongue under the damp slik of the gusset, lifting until she can safely get her teeth on it. Lena gasps, grabbing Kara’s knees as if she would blow away if she didn’t hold on.

“Grr.”

Kara pulls slowly, dragging the panties down Lena’s legs. Lena’s toes dig into the headboard and every bit of her tightens up. Kara spares a hand to run her fingers up the inside of a knee and to scratch the muscles of Lena’s thighs.

“Get those off me!” Lena commands.

Ignoring her, Kara pulls slowly until one side slips free and than the other. She play growls and shakes her head like a dog with a rat and lets go, sending the foul obstruction sailing onto the floor.

Lena’s fingers are digging into Kara’s ass and she’s panting.

“Use your words.”

“I can’t reach, Kara. You’re too tall.”

She strikes the zipper of Kara’s jeans--hard--sending a twitch through Kara’s whole body even with the denim. Her teeth bites the area just under the navel to illustrate the problem.

“Hold still, let me…” Kara sits up against the headboard. “Come back and hook your legs around my head.”

After a few comical attempts, Lena manages to get her legs around Kara’s head tight enough that they both have what they need. Only Kara’s hands around her hip-bones and Lena’s head in Kara’s lap support Lena’s weight.

_Have to be careful not to let her fall._

Lena is _merciless,_ yanking the zipper of Kara’s jeans and pulling them down and ripping open Kara’s boxers. She seals her lips around Kara’s clit and sucks hard once before easing up into a lazy rhythm, though still desperate. She lifts her head and gulps for air when she needs more breath.

Kara’s world is a white blur, far too hazy to reciprocate...unless...she uses her other senses. She sniffs and presses her lips, seeking her prize with more primitive means.

Lena’s legs close around her neck like a noose when she finds it.

Kara dips her tongue in first, relishing the tang in her mouth and inhaling as much of the musk as she can. She sucks on one lip and then the other, left and right, drawing them into her mouth before letting go and switching. She can feel the hood peeling back with each repetition until the hard tip of Lena’s clit brushes her upper lip.

She lifts her head long enough to ask. Lena has yet to give her a moment’s pause, so she’s speaking into a snowstorm while a firestorm of Lena’s making melts her spine.

“If it’s too much, bite me twice. I can’t really hear well with these…” Kara sucks a hickey into Lena’s inner thigh. “...lovelies wrapped around my head.”

“All right,” Lena gulps.

Kara leans back in and closes her lips tight around the clit. She takes a hand and presses three fingers into Lena’s mound, father back where the last of the balls must be.

“Kara!” Lena shrieks.

_Now you’re ready._

Kara puts her lips back and drinks. When the juices start to run down her chin and onto her neck, Lena’s attentions wander enough for Kara to regain her senses. Crimson and slick and swollen, Lena’s cleft is spread before her, standing out from her pale skin like a rose fallen into a snowbank.

 _Seeing is helpful,_ Kara decides.

“Kara, please.”

‘Fuckfuckfuck ri-” Lena gasps, hardly able to get air for words. “There. Likethatjustliketthat.”

She throws her head back, sweat flying from the tips of her hair and screams Kara’s name.

“Enough, enough, enough,” Lena begs.

Lena’s whole body sags and Kara finds herself draped from head to toe in silky skin, creamy flesh and sticky black hair. Unable to remove them without Kara’s help, Lena’s legs remain clamped around Kara’s head.

“Shh…” Kara soothes, running her finger in a little circle on Lena’s back. “Easy. Breathe.”

Each time she comes around, she slows and presses just a bit harder, drawing Lena’s attention to the caress but also to the pace.

“That’s...amazing,” Lena mumbles. “It’s like you’re reminding my body how to _breathe._ ”

“As much fun as it was making you forget, breathing is good for you.”

“So I hear.”

“Let me go, Kara. I want to hold you.”

“Fine! Bye-bye for now, darling.”

Kara leans forward for a quick kiss and Lena’s legs clamp down reflexively.

“Please...warn...me...before...kissing...my...clit,” she pants.

Lena snuggles in, resting her head on the upper slope of Kara’s breasts and reaching for Kara’s hands and letting hers slacken.

“I like this,” Lena admits. “Which sort of scares me. I was taught not to _feel,_ Kara.”

“Which isn’t a thing. You have feelings, Lena.”

“I know. But the only thing I know how to do is _ignore them._ It’s part of why your nightmare was so scary--to me--is because if you needed me, needed comfort…” Lena sighs. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Obviously I’m not the example of dealing with my fears either, Lena. My mother was trying to tell me about her end-of-life decisions, which are hers, and I kept interrupting her with gizmos.”

Lena lifts her head partway.

“Were those real?”

“Yeah. All of them. It would take some work to make them human-ready but the cloning tanks should work fine. Null clones with no higher brain function. No human volunteers required.”

“Huh.”

“Huh is about right, Lena.”

“Winn didn’t get to it but we want to work with L-Tech. Start getting some of this tech out there. I have designs for no-leak uranium fuel cells that could power this city for a few centuries and are about so big…”

Kara holds her arms out.

“And ones that could power a car…”

She holds her hands out no further apart than two golf balls.

“Electric engines, plasma thrusters that work on hydrogen, fueling systems you could stuff in a garage and feed water from the storm sewers. Barrier fields that mean no car that crashes would _actually hit_ anything. Like bumper cars.”

“Sounds amazing.”

Kara shrugs.

“That’s basic. I was sent with a schematic database large enough to rebuild Krypton over a couple centuries if I kept feeding it material and making more fabbers. Enough to outfit cities, star ports, vehicles, hospitals, defenses, infrastructure. Build star ships and probes and colony ships...”

“...and weapons,” she admits.

“Earth could have it’s own interstellar empire in two hundred years...or I could give out the wrong thing and the war burns the planet’s surface down to the bedrock.

Lena taps her fingers on Kara’s ribs.

“Those first few pieces alone would beat out fossil fuels, traditional air travel and automobile accidents. But if those just started showing up, people would wonder. We figured we could do the gaming system because big jumps happen in computing and also because it was entertainment. Harmless.”

“The more scrutiny on me, the quicker someone wonders who Alex is. They wonder who Alex is, they find Eliza. And the Williams. And my aunt Sarah and my mother’s synagogue and...everyone I care about but can’t protect. If they need me, I would rip mountains open to get to them but it might not be strong enough or quick enough.”

“So you need a partnership. With a woman whose brother has a history of releasing reverse-engineered alien tech, a reputation for releasing new technology--fuck the consequences--and a scary reputation.”

“Yes. To make it seem natural we could give you the coordinates to salvage a ultra heavy freighter, a frigate and a couple corvettes lying in shallow water.  Couple days is a plausible lead time for a woman smart as you,” Kara jokes.

“Lex got into a lot of trouble with a four-person scout ship,” Lena reminds her.

“You’re not Lex. Besides, it was bound to happen. Planets with water and oxygen-nitrogen atmospheres are good places for a few dozen species. So if a ship near here needed to crash land, Earth was friendly enough to give them a fighting chance. We...ABLE that is...know of twenty-three wrecks to go with all the deliberate landings and drop offs.”

“But wherever would I find someone like that? That businesswoman?” Kara wonders.

“You might have to make your bed, see who falls out. If I ask why you want me to do this...”

“Tsk-tsk. If you keep doubting my trust in you, Lena, I might just have to leash myself to your desk after all. Give you some titanium-promethium-neutron chains even I can’t break. Let you put a collar on me. Eat you out when you’re in meetings. Stand naked in front of your investors if you ask. Let me show you _how total_ my trust is...how safe I know I am with you.”

“Why do you trust me so much, so quickly?”

“Valid question, I suppose,” Kara sighs. “Because the first time I heard about you _existing_ was you informing on CADMUS. Trying to right a wrong. And because no one else ever has...so you deserve it. All I had to do when I saw you across that bar was _give you a chance._ ”

“Ugh,” Kara groans. “My implant wants me.”

“Kolex, end hard privacy mode on audio but keep it on video.”

“Done, Lady Kara. You have a phone call. White House switchboard.”

Lena’s eyebrow arches. It seems to be the only place she never wears makeup so it’s just as dazzling now as it was before.   Lena's face glows even after all of her other makeup dripped onto Kara’s skin.

“They want to meet. Soon. I was thinking next week. Hold it for two more minutes, Kolex.”

“Couldn’t you be over there in like five minutes? Hovering over the lawn, sneering down at the little humans?”

Kara holds up two fingers and curls one back halfway.

“...if I flew. A few milliseconds, if I warped. I think they’d try and shoot me down though. I’m sort of scared. My little Red-K tantrum messed up a lot of things.”

“So you think he’s _not_ going to give you a Medal of Freedom for destroying a rogue nuclear state and freeing the victims of a Stalinist dictatorship? He’s going to what, arrest you?”

“Worse. They might want me to work for them. I’m sure the CIA can find Eliza and...threatening her would make me theirs.”

“Take me with you. I’m good at not getting talked into bad deals.”

Kara boops the tip of Lena’s nose.

“Good idea!”

“I’m just going to have to get used to that, aren’t I?”

“If it’s really bothering you, I’ll stop. I just think you are cute and kinder than you realize. Sometimes, you need reminding that you have more to offer the world than a power suit, designer heels and a stern look.”

“Hence treating me like a pet rabbit?”

“They’re so cute,” Kara whines. “But I can stop.”

Lena shrugs.

“Only do when we’re alone. In public, I want…”

“Name it, darling.”

“I want to be on your arm. Hand on my back, keep me calm. Show me off. Like I'm normal.  Like I was any other woman in the room.”

“Be my genuine pleasure. Kolex?”

 

 

> **“Ms. Zor-El, I don’t appreciate being made to wait!”**
> 
> **“Secretary Clinton,” Lena gulps. “We weren’t aware it was you.”**
> 
> **“Lena Luthor? What are you doing…” she begins.  “Hmm.”**
> 
> **Lena laughs. “Well, let’s just say we haven’t gotten breakfast yet.”**
> 
> **“Note to self. If I need to run on gay rights, call Superwoman.”**
> 
> **Kara hasn’t managed to make words yet. Lena bites her earlobe.**
> 
> **“Mrs. Clinton! Huge fan,” Kara gushes. “I’ll make a note that your desk line is to go right through. Kolex, make a note.”**
> 
> **“Done. All calls from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s known contact methods lines will come through unmasked.”**
> 
> **“So how much for a robot butler?” Clinton demands. “I think I’d like it better than half of my interns.”**
> 
> **“They are handy. Secure, too. I put everything through mine. Work email, personal email. Only carry a phone for selfies. But how do you feel about a quarter-inch thick, four inch wide coil of wires being implanted and a tattoo over it?”**
> 
> **Clinton harrumphs.**
> 
> **“Get back to you.”**
> 
> **“The president wants to meet you in the next three days. Screw that. Two days. You created quite a mess, young lady. We need to have an official position on it--on you--and your activities. You may not be wearing the Stars and Stripes out there but it’s no secret where you live.”**
> 
> **“I can reach out through my military contacts,” Kara offers. “Set up a secure location.”**
> 
> **“We can handle that.”**
> 
> **“Really? What’s the Secret Service’s plan for Daxamite slavers or K’Hund mercenary clans? Because I hear I have a bounty on my head that could buy a planet.”**
> 
> **“I’ll give you the coordinates for my base of operations and I can let some teams in to review ahead of time.”**
> 
> **“How about this time tomorrow?  Lena and I have a business appearance to make.”**
> 
> **“I’ll take it. For what it’s worth, I think you have potential, kid. We just need to make sure you don’t scare the human race shitless trying to realize it.”**

 

The call ends.

“Kolex, did Alex and Eliza ever finalize that sedative?”

“No, Lady Kara.”

“Honeyed chamomile tea it is!” Lena declares, sliding off Kara’s bed. “Always works for me.”

Kara sighs and starts to get up.

“Wait here. _Watch_. When I say so--not before--come in to the kitchen and make us breakfast.”

Lena walks nude into the other room, sunlight glittering off her skin like diamonds, her hair haloed against the fire of a half-risen sun.  Radiant even with the shades drawn.

Then Lena disappears around the corner, taking away the swell of her hips and the globes of her ass and the delicious splash of ink-black hair on paper-white skin.  The universe is cruel.

“Eggs?” Lena calls out.

“Uh, brown box, top shelf.  Farmer’s Market in sharpie.”

“Thanks!”

“Bread?” she asks.

“Top cabinet.  Cinnamon is lower right cabinet, nutmeg too.  Honey is on the counter with the tea.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I have enough stuff to make french toast or steak sandwiches!” Kara hollers.  “I’m guessing you’re doing the former?”

“Cheeky cunt,” Lena mutters.

Kara breaks the rules.  She is around the corner, arms around Lena’s torso and pulling her away from the tea kettle before Lena knows to gasp.

“I’m so-” Lena begins.

“I am,” Kara whispers, scratching her nails up the column of Lena’s throat.  “A big girl.”

She pushes Lena’s head sideways and forward so that she can run her tongue behind the earlobe.

“If you want to talk dirty, do it.  But if it’s that sort of thing…” Kara growls.  “...that slang, don’t hide your accent, _fitheach beag._ ”

_ <”Little Raven” | Galiege a.k.a. Irish > _

“H-h-how did you learn _Galiege_?” Lena whispers.  “Not the most common language.”

“I already knew ten languages.  I open the app and see this gorgeous,” Kara purrs.

“Green eyed...”

She covers Lena’s eyes with her palms.

“Juicy…”

She drags a hand up Lena’s belly and curls it around her breast.  Lena gasps.

“Pale skinned…”

She scrapes Lena’s shoulder blade with her teeth.

“Goddess.  So I put two and two together.”

“You learned quick...your accent is good.”

“It’s textbook,” Kara jokes.  “Quite literally. Hopefully talking with you will make it more lived in.  Because most Kryptonian words, or _kryptohavli_ at least, are dual-syllable.  You pronounce two at once, simultaneously.  So my brain…”

Kara isn’t sure how to explain.

“Your brain is primed to focus on more than one spoken word at once.  So you would have a gift for associating one word with another in a different language.  Like the Rosetta Stone.”

“Exactly.  So smart! Only I can’t boop your nose from here.  So I had Kolex put together a few thousand samples of female voices speaking _Galiege_ , tweak the inflection so it would better match my own, and played them against _kryptohavli_ and English samples.  Every night for two weeks. Helps that I only sleep for recreational reasons.”

Lena shivers.

“All that, in case you ever went on a date with me?”

“In case I _succeeded._ I pinged your profile ten seconds after seeing it.”

“Teach me your language,” Lena begs.  “The…”

Kara has not spent long enough nibbling Lena’s ear and sucking on her jugular vein and time’s short.  The heat death of the universe isn’t that far off, after all.

_If Lena wants to speak, she’ll have to learn to multitask because I am not going to stop making her moan.  Merciful Rao..._

“...the one from this morning.  That was Kryptonian, right? It wasn’t the one I associated with Krypton.  Lex taught me one summer. As a joke.”

“I don’t remember,” Kara admits.  “I was still coming out of it when I shouted that.”

Lena muddles through the pronunciation, cringing no matter how much Kara smiles at her.

Kara drops Lena’s shoulders.

“Did I-” Lena begins.

“No, no.  It’s fine.  Nothing you did.  That’s...that’s my _aunt’s language._ Astra. I was begging my mother not to leave, Eliza, not my birth mother.  Funny _that_ would bubble up in a dream about my Earth mom. Her and mom were twins, grew up in the estates in Juru Valley.  Still common there and in estates and houses they deal with often. It’s called Ajatkar.”

“Juru Valley?” Lena asks.  “It’s real?”

“Let me guess, Lex had it marked under ‘stupid alien ghost stories’?  That trash about the Wizards of Juru Valley?”

“Pretty much.”

Kara laughs.

“The Wizards were an up-jumped sex cult that revolted against the _true rulers_ of that area.  House Ina-Zenn and the War Queens.  Matriarchal succession, strong warrior tradition.”

“Gray hair, dark skin...” Kara purrs.  She puts one of Lena’s hands on her bicep.  “...powerful women _.”_

“Oh,” Lena gasps.  “That surname is your aunt's, not your uncles?”

“Yes.  My aunt’s husband is what’s called Nameless, not part of a house.  So their marriage carries her name. My mother married into House El.  She could have chosen but she took dad’s name.  Mom and Astra actually traded suitors. Zor-El was promised to Astra but…she wasn’t half as interested as mom.  Alura _begged_ and Astra lobbied the matching system.  My mom and dad actually loved each other--fiercely--in a culture where that was optional for married couples.”

“Their daughter isn’t so different,” Lena teases.

“No, she really isn’t.  Tea’s almost ready. I can teach you a few words while we eat.”

“How can y-”

The whistle cuts her off.  Lena steps back hurriedly, not having realized how close she was standing until steam tickled her skin.

“I can see in infrared,” Kara chortles.  “I’ll make some French toast.”

Kara really hasn’t had to cook for a lady before.  College didn’t give her the opportunity but given that there’s only four or five things she can manage, she’s had to cook them so many times she got fancy about it.

“Graduating in August, right?” Lena asks after two bites.

“Yeah.”  

“Triple majored...is college credit collecting one of your powers?”

“Not sleeping is a power.  And I cheated.”

“Oh?  Do tell,” Lena purrs, lifting an eyebrow.

_Fuck.  Those eyebrows.  I would hand Lillian Luthor concentrated Kryptonite if Lena looked at me like that and told me to trust her._

“I got around the hours per semester thing.  Night classes where possible and I also I had Kolex send a camouflaged drone to Stanford to sit in my classes.  Stanford doesn’t report their student lists to the University of California and vice versa. Did the Stanford homework when everyone else was sleeping.”

“Big hurry for a woman who said she wouldn’t age,” Lena teases.

“Says the girl with a bachelor’s at 19, masters at 21, doctorate at 23.  From three different Ivy League institutions.”

“I was so glad to escape.  If your mother was Lillian Luthor, you would apply to college at age fourteen.”

Kolex’s chassis hovers by, smacks into the wall and then the cabinet.

“What’s wrong with him?” Lena asks.

“Privacy mode.  I don’t let him do visual recording or audio when I’m with a date.  Not without her consent.”

Smack!  Bonk!  Thud!  

“He’s going to break something, Kara.”

“You’re still naked.  Not sure I want to share.”

“Kolex,” Kara sighs.  “Turn on rangefinder. Resolution limit of twenty centimeters.  Discard any data more refined than that.”

“Huh.  Good solution,” Lena muses.

“He’ll know you’re here but he won’t know which end is your hair and which is...the other hair.”

Lena throws some syrup on Kara’s face.  Kara wiggles her eyebrows, scrapes it off and offers her finger to Lena who gladly sucks it clean.

“Do I have any of it in my teeth?” Kara asks.  “Not that I would mind.”

Lena takes a deep breath and pushes away from the table.

“I...’

She said it like she’s about to announce the breakup of the British Empire.

“...am going to get dressed.  We have to be at the airport in, " she looks at the wall clock.

“Shit.”

Kara snickers.

“Really?  Really, darling?  You thought _that’s_ how we were flying?”

“Long as you’ll take it easy and let me wear clothes.  Which I will need to borrow. No time to have the limo service bring them.”

“I actually sat down and did the calculations before I came to your office.  If you hold on tight, I can stretch the warp field _around_ you quite easily,” Kara calls around the corner.

Something heavy crashes in the next room.  Lena’s gasp and a stream of almost-words, most of them curses.  Kara manages to pick ‘tease’, ‘alien’, ‘sex’, ‘god’, ‘magic’ and ‘fly’ out of the word mash.  So the faster-than-light road trip must have sounded good to Lena.

“I’ve still got it,” Kara tells no one in particular.

 

* * *

 

### July 15, 2006  | Lena Luthor

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles Convention Center

 

Las Vegas disappears and Los Angeles replaces it in a blaze of color and mind-bending shapes.  The butter yellow and neon red of the Strip smear away like a child playing with watercolor paints and the eternally blue sky and gray asphalt of LA replaces it as the searing white and blue-flecked flash fades.

“Why did I keep my eyes open?”  Lena groans.

“Kind of like the visible light spectrum _orgasmed,_ isn’t it?” Kara teases.

“Is it? I just thought it was contagious epilepsy.”

“Hmm.  Have to see if there’s a way I can build you like, filter eyeglasses.  I see it differently--gorgeous--but my brain _was_ surgically zapped to let me process images and shapes affected by blueshift and lensing.”

Lena looks around.  Kara brought them out at the edge of the crowd about a hundred feet up.  It was a short enough distance that they agreed that it wouldn’t involve too much pollution on the bubble...though they did just spray the sidewalk with melted snow from a storm over the Sierra Nevada mountains.

“Kara!” Lena scolds.  “We are _visible._ ”

“Heavens.  Am I just floating out of the sky with my lover in my arms? How rude!”

“Don’t you think your secr-”

“Which one sweetheart?” Kara purrs.  “My secret identity as Superwoman or my secret identity as _yours_?”

“Fuck you.  Every other superhero has one.  It was a reasonable guess.”

“Guess you’ve got the only out and proud superhero, babe.”

“Really?  No other rainbow cape types?  Wonder Woman?”

“Hell, yes.  Pretty sure she’s dating a politician now.  Thing for ladies with power. She’s submissive to her _bones._ Amazons do a lot of roleplay on the island, I hear.”

“Batwoman, obviously.”

Kara nods.

“Dating Big Barda, as a matter of fact.”

“Who?”

“Daughter of an evil space god named Darkseid, from a hell planet.  Literally. The universe--or rather, the race of Monitors who policed it--formed a tumor around his planet, his tech and his armies just to keep him back.”

“Sounds like a quality lady,” Lena scoffs.

“Estranged daughter,” Kara adds.  “Took her military unit with her when she rebelled.”

“Oh.  I’ll allow it.”

Kara snorts.

“Any others?  Aquaman?”

“Straight.  If you could date a water-witch mermaid…”

“Fair.”

“Batman?”

“Catwoman would have ripped the throat out of any competition, so no.”

“Zatanna?”

“You had to ask?  She’s a _gothy witch in a tux,_ Lena.  Three neon signs.  Dating...whatsit. Azrael. Angel of Death or Angel of Punk Haircuts and Goth Jewelry.  Forget which it is.”

Lena laughs.

“You forgot Vixen and Hawkgirl,” Kara teases.  “Rawr! Screech!”

“The woman who can channel wild animals, take on their features and likes to blend her body with cats and the one with the wings and feathers?  I am not sure what to do with that mental image, Kara.”

Kara laughs.

“Internet fetish waiting to happen, I know.”

Kara sets them down in the ‘vendors’ line.  Lena tries over and over to find a place where she’s not rubbing elbows with sweaty men.  She tugs on Kara’s suit jacket.

“Too much crowd, Kara.  Too much men, not enough showering.  Unbutton your jacket, please.”

Kara complies.

“Don’t take it off, just...let me borrow a bit of it.”

“Sure.”

Lena tucks herself inside as far as she can, pulling the silk lining up to her cheek.  Letting the smell of Kara calm her.

“We are so late.  Hope Winn is holding his own.  Kolex? Call him.”

“Kara…” Winn snarls.  “Where are you?”

“She went to Vegas,” Lena teases.

“It is in LA, Kara.  Always has been.”

“Elvis made me do it!” Kara protests.  “We’re outside. Just waiting in line.”

“You wearing the suit?”

_Of course she is, Winn.  I’m inside it right now._

“Yeah, why?”

“How quick you figure that line would disappear?” he suggests.

“Huh.  You sure?”

“Kara, check your social media sometimes!  You are famous and famous for being someone you don’t want to get in the way of.  Just try it. I need a rescue. The spokesmodel at the next booth over is...handsy...think they may not have explained her job well.”

“Poor Winn,” Lena teases.  “Big boobed flirty woman scaring you?”

“I’m gay!” he hisses.  “And I’m pretty sure she’s drunk, or maybe drugged by guys in the booth on the other side.  So yeah, it’s not cool.”

“Lena, can you step like six inches away?  Just for a moment.”

“Blue Beetle, transmat the base layer of Scion.”

A white flash leaves Lena blinking...and wondering what the fuss was about.

_But what changed?  She’s still gorgeous.  She was right, silver lipstick works better on her than any other color.  She chose the suit well well, light gray really calls out her skin tone.  The pocket watch with the sigil on the back is cute.  Purple lining is a bit more billionaire playboy than I’d like but it was cuddly.  Buttons…_

Lena swallows.

_Still only two shirt buttons opened.  Thank God. Wait!_

Lena puts her hand on the top button still buttoned and slides her finger inside.  Instead of meeting skin, her fingertips meet something cold and hard that rolls under her touch.  Something with a gold-trimmed red line peeking out of it, just above the top of Kara’s breasts.  It's indigo, only a few tones lighter than Kara's plum-dark skin.

“May I?” Lena asks.

“Are you asking if you can take my clothes off?” Kara jokes.

“Just a few buttons.”

“I’m joking.  You can always do that. Go ahead.”

Lena’s shaking fingers get one button loose, then another, then another.  Finally she pulls the shirt-tails out of Kara’s slacks and spreads the fabric apart.

“There it is,” she breathes.  “The whole thing.”

The sigil of the House of El decorates Kara’s chest now and the fabric--metal fibers? liquid crystal? force field?--there is rigid, jutting out in a flat plate.  Probably to prevent any wisecracks about the sigil only being there to call out her breasts.

_As if she needs that._

Lena runs her fingers across the corners of the outer glyph and then lets her fingers tip-toe across the corners of the ‘S’ like part.

“You all right?” Kara asks.  “You’re being...solemn about this.”

“Yes." "No." "I’m not sure.”

Kara takes Lena’s hands and lifts one to her lips.  She presses a long, soothing kiss onto the back of the hand.

“Thanks.”

“So much better.  I prefer it when you thank me for affection rather than asking why you’re worthy.”

“Noted,” Lena scoffs.

She sighs.

“I guess...I guess I’m amazed, is the best way to put it.  I know you must wear this thing all the time.”

Kara shrugs.

“Trying to remember to never leave the house without it, yeah.”

“But you are _you,_ Superwoman, alien with powers who fights crime and scares the literal shit out of bad cops.”

“Not my best-smelling save,” Kara grumbles.

“And I’m Lena Luthor.  To these people,” she gestures at the crowd.  “I’m lucky if they think I'm  _not that evil,_ let alone _good._  I...I...thing is..."

Lena stops, swallows hard and finds more words.  "...this is huge for me.”

Lena taps the center of of the glyph.

“You’ve never displayed that out in _public_ with _me_.”

“Huh.  You’re right,” Kara admits.  “Have to do it more often, _fitheach beag._ ”

_ <”Little Raven” | Galiege a.k.a. Irish > _

“Please stop speaking _Galiege_ and giving me pet names and kissing my hand and making gay eye contact, Kara.  That’s I think five things you’re doing just to make me feel loved.  Which I’m not good at receiving.  Yet.  Or giving it back...all I know how to do is sex and crying.  So give me some time to calm down."

_My shirt...at breakfast.  It would be so small on you, barely reaching the bottom of your breasts.  Nothing else.  Warming my hands on your coffee and your skin._

"...and now I’m imagining your shirt open without a bodysuit.  Thanks, brain.  Pretty sure it’s a bad look if I finger fuck you right here in line.”

Kara’s smile nearly destroys Lena’s control…but a roaming herd of morons saves them both.

“Bro, for real?”  “Yeah! It’s her.”  “Hey, Superwoman!”

Kara looks around until she spots them, giving Lena time to try and hide in her suit jacket.

“Hi, guys!”

“Dude, I didn’t know you were a gamer!”

“Once in a while,” Kara laughs.  "Never online."

"Why's that?"

"Protest.  Until the servers ban little boys whose balls haven’t dropped...running around yelling about raping me or fucking my mom.”

All five of the men flocking towards her stop talking.

“Yeah.  That part sucks,” one of them finally admits.

“You think?  Try signing in to chat with a _female_ voice.”

“Ouch. No thanks.”

“Did you bring a date?” asks another.  “Or a really clingy business partner?”

He is a man with stud earrings, a nose ring and hair both spiky enough and purple enough to mark him as anything but a ‘bro’.

“Date. Thought we’d get out since I was coming here already.  But this crowd is a lot for her to deal with,” Kara sighs.

The five of them keep talking over each other, blending the words into a mush that Lena couldn’t untangle without looking at them.

“I didn’t know you were gay.”  “Why wouldn’t she be? She’s hot!”  “Superwoman Lesbian scenes? I just nutted.”  “Dude, shutthefuckup. She’s got superhearing.”  "Wake up, Todd.  All the best people are gay!"

“Hey, I get it.  If I had a hot date with a giant coat I’d hide in it too,” the frattiest-looking one jokes.  “This crowd is dense.  Four hours in the sun.  It's ended up with a whiff.”

“I’m not human.  I'm actually four lawn gnomes on a double date wearing a trenchcoat,” the punk adds.

Kara laughs.

“That explains it!  How’s the mowing?”

“Noisy.  Smells like fresh cut grass, so that’s nice.  Sometimes we have a beer after.”

Someone taps on Lena’s shoulder, holds out two VIP badges and points at an empty, cordoned off line to a side door.

“Thanks,” she replies.

“Bye guys!” Kara calls out.

“If you’re up to it, baby, maybe I can see more of your lovely face on the show floor?”

“Sure,” Lena whispers, glad she has time to compose herself.  

They’re in public so word of her crying onto the suit would probably get around.  She doesn’t feel safe doing that, not while Lillian’s still alive...which is something for the to-do list.

They make their way onto the floor.  Kara politely tries out different gear, dodging between fans and autograph seekers and the ‘booth babes’ going to and from their jobs as flesh-and-silicone billboards.  

Finding Winn’s tiny booth isn’t hard.  There’s a mob waiting for a chance at the three rigs set up in the demo area.

Lena takes the seat beside Winn and Kara takes the other one.  He may not be intimidating but he’s kind and Lena will take that.  Not like she has a scary alien girlfriend for both sides.

The head of Sony and Microsoft’s hardware teams come by and ask Winn a ton of questions about GPUs and RAM types and copy protection measures.  He keeps frantically nodding at Kara to make them ask _her_ instead.

"Talk to her!  She designed it," He finally snaps.

“Look, guys," Kara jokes, leaning back in her chair.  "None of that matters.”

She grabs one side of her shirt and shakes it.  Both men zero in on the Superwoman symbol.

“Because that box…”

She nods at the nearest demo rig.

“...is not from this planet.  You’re not going to build equal gear, not without decades of research into quantum computers, qubit programming languages, functionally perfect vacuum layers to keep them cold, heat transfer coils, optical interconnects on the petabyte-per-second scale, artificial intelligence...is that everything, Winn?”

“I suggested the paint job, the wire arrangement, and the helmet shape,” he jokes.

“True,” Kara admits.  "You also had the idea, wrote the ad, explained how games work on this planet and set up the store, so don't sell yourself short."

“How much?” the guy in the Xbox shirt demands.

“For the licensing rights?” Kara laughs. 

“We talking million with an ‘m’ or billion with a ‘b’?”

“Don’t,” Lena warns.

“I got this, darling.”

“Let me make a call.  Don’t talk to this asshole,” he growls, pointing at the guy from Sony.

“Kolex, draw up a contract for _licensing rights_ only and transmat a laser printer.  But keep the word Gestalt in it somewhere...maybe a synonym. And make sure that manufacturing rights are _not_ included.”

Kara pats Winn's hand.

"It's our baby, they have to keep our name on it."

He nods.

“In process.  Cross-referencing similar contracts to make it enforceable.”

“What are you doing, Kara?” Lena hisses.

“Hmm?” She asks, oh-so-sweetly.

“You’re fleecing a multinational corporation,” Lena warns her.  “For billions of dollars.”

“No, I’m writing a perfectly valid contract that they will sign, too worried Sony will sign instead.  It’s not like they _could_ make these on their own or even fully understand the circuit designs. Not without fabbers and a way to make compute crystal and quantum nodes, all off which takes training by computing and crystal synthesis and physics professors who...” she pauses.

“Died on Krypton."

Lena drops her head into her hands and groans.

“So by the time they can complain, you’ll be billions richer and there's nothing to take you to court on.”

“Bingo.  Their money can help me get an off-site building for the production and shipping.  Maybe seed money, too.  I want to start a foundation," Kara muses.  "For people who lose things in superhero fights."

Lena runs her finger up the back of Kara's earlobe.

"And to buy the penthouse next to mine..." she husks.  "The floor above mine at L-Tech.  We can knock down some walls, put in stairs."

"Yes," Kara gulps.  "Also that."

And when we drop the Tier 5 and Tier 8 versions, those rights stay with me.  If I can bring myself to do one that's Tier 10, 11 or 12...I won’t sell that to anyone who I don’t personally interview.  That’s power.  You could run wargames with that.”

“The tiniest tweak would mean different circuitry...trillions of differences,” Lena admits. “So no way they can claim your next model.”

“Hundreds of quadrillions, actually.  So smart!”

Per their agreement, Kara does not bop Lena's nose in public.

“Yeah,” Lena laughs.  “You’re good.  Evil scheme.  Immaculate execution.”

Some random guy from a company called Rockstar Games comes by and starts chatting with Kara and _rubbing his fucking foot_ against her leg.

Lena sees Kara’s hand heating up, her anger manifesting in red-hot skin.  Kara’s keeping it hidden under table but it _will_ be hot enough to burn just by proximity.  Soon.

“Step back,” Lena snaps.  “Stop touching her."

“Do you know who I am?”

He shakes his head.

“I am Lena Luthor.  My brother is Lex Luthor.  The guy who attacked Superman...who hasn't been seen since.  He’s crazier than a bag of squirrels but he's smart.  He’s dangerous.  It runs in the family.  So it would be a shame if I thought my girlfriend needs some ex-special forces guys to protect her.  To make sure no smelly, limp-dicked horndog like you puts his hand on her!" She snarls. 

The man scurries off, his face drained of blood and with a small damp spot on his khakis.

“It’s kind of hot when you go supervillian like that, babe.  Just...maybe dial it back to seven so nothing you say is legally actionable?”

“Nine.  I won’t make the violence sound specifically targeted at _them_.  No jury would convict me.  Works for asshole preachers all the time."

“Eight.  You’re a better person than they are.”

“Fine.  Because I love you.”

“Aw...thanks, babe.”

The rest of the day is easy enough.  Kara sells different variants of the hardware to Sony and Microsoft with some distinctive minor features for each, giving them just enough to make some TV commercials.  Lena is now not the only multi-billionaire at the table...she is one of three.

A couple tiny development companies come by and ask Kara for tips with the interface. 

Several people come up to her and gush about finally making the game they wish they had as a kid, whether that was a gay hero or a female hero or a female hero with actual clothes and tits smaller than blimps or in one case, a hero that's a haunted paintbrush trying to paint the scene of the crime so police can solve it.

_These people are more creative than I gave them credit for...some of them._

Being with Kara, someone so many people want to talk to, makes it easy for Lena to be in a building packed with strangers.

Around three o'clock, a plump female programmer with a company T-Shirt with the name crossed out and sharpie that reads ‘it’s not a space game unless there’s hot aliens’ comes by, starry-eyed and speechless.

The man with her introduces himself.

“Casey Hudson, Bioware.  This is Julia.”

“Kara Zor-El, sitting here.  Hi, Julia.”

The programmer giggles.

_She has it bad.  Can’t blame her._

“Sitting here and also Galaxy Games, I guess.  Wait...didn’t you guys make _Knights of the Old Republic?_ ”

“That’s us.”

“Hmm.  Seems like your whole shtick--playing over and over, bunch of weirdo teammates, everybody making it their own--is a good fit for this.  You know that the way the system works means you can’t build the same game for every user, right?  You can't build a game, really.  Not in the traditional sense.”

Casey nods.

“Which is an incredible thing, by the way.  We were just discussing how all our jobs changed in this new world of yours.  Yay for alien life in the universe!”

Kara laughs.

“I try.  So is this just fangirling and fanboying or...”

Casey coughs.

“Right.  So, like you said, our players like to customize.  We were wondering how they could customize _that rig._ Can we offer logo-ed hardware for our upcoming games?”

Kara shakes her head.

“Not as such, no.  Little secret?  The outer surface _is_ the conductor for the wires.”

“Really?”

“Mmm-hmm.  I made it look like fixed connectors rather than omni-directional so it wouldn't be too sci-fi."

"Uh-huh," Casey mutters, clearly not buying it.  "This way it seems totally antique."

"They just magnetically lock at the top by default but if you run out of cord, it’ll pop loose and slide across the surface.  So painting it is no-go, risks signal loss.  Etching it would destroy it.”

Kara taps the pen she’s been using for autographs on the table.

“What about a little plate that the system could project their avatar onto?  People could put it on their wall, point a web camera at the plate if they wanted to stream it.  Wouldn’t be specifically _yours_ but you could laser etch a logo as an aftermarket.”

“Oh my god!” Julia squeals.  “That’s so perfect.  What do you think, boss?”

“So she does talk,” Kara jokes.  "Good for you.”

Winn hands Kara a fresh Coke and Lena fresh Diet Coke.  He offers one to Julia who takes it with a look of awe on her face as bright as the one the Virgin Mary had the first time she held baby Jesus.

 

By the end of the afternoon, the pace thins.  

By the time they are kicked out of the convention center, Lena has taken Kara up on several offers to 'stretch their legs real quick' and fucked Kara and been fucked herself in stalls in all three women’s bathrooms in the building.  During their last romp, peeling the suit off Kara’s shoulders mere heartbeats after Kara’s fingers slid out of her cunt was enough to buckle her knees.

In their hotel room, they split the mini-bar between them, laughing and buzzed from each other's company and booze and too many ten dollar candy bars.  

The king-size bed in the hotel room doesn’t last four minutes once Kara pushes Lena into the comforter and mounts her.  The wooden legs snap and the whole thing drops to the floor.  Kara doesn't miss a thrust.

Sometime before Lena's brain completely shuts down, she feels hands cradling her and lifting her up like a bride on a honeymoon.  Kara wraps Lena in a bedsheet and flies them both back to National City, balmy air tickling Lena's skin.  She tucks Lena in beside her, whispering both sweet nothings and filthy promises, taking turns between Galiegeand Ajatkar. 

 

* * *

 

 

### July 16, 2006 | Barack Obama

State of Baja California, Mexico

Pacific coastline, fifteen miles south of Rosarito

 

Rahm sits--stewing, as usual--across from the president.  The first lady has somehow managed to make being crammed into a helicopter with six powerful men, eight agents, and an army’s worth of male ego look _dignified._ A sheaf of papers are open in Secretary Clinton’s lap and Bob Gates is muttering rapid-fire orders to someone at the Pentagon.  

Joe Biden stayed back on the _Harry Truman_ pending the successful outcome of the first meetings.

“It occurs to me…this whole thing is a stone’s throw away from a constitutional crisis.”

“How so, Mr. President?”

“One, two, three, four, five...six people in the line of succession.  Just in this helicopter. Joe back on the ship makes seven.”

“Secretary Chu was _pissed_ you made him stay back,” Rahm reminds the president.

“I figure Steve would just set up camp if I brought him with us.  Might try and have Superwoman legally adopt him. The things we’ve already seen her do...” Obama exhales.  “Scare me.”

“Glad you brought someone to write treaties?” Clinton asks.

“Ecstatic.”

One of the attaches comes back from the cockpit, her uniform starched enough to stand on its own, cap under her arm, hair in a bun.  The Marine Corps insignia on her shoulder is probably bulletproof, it’s been so well polished. Major Catherine Harper has the sort of razor-sharp mind and all right-angle posture that drill sergeants can’t create...only uncover.

“Sirs, ma’ams. Pilot says we are coming up on it now.”

“Open the cockpit door, Major.”

“Aye-aye.”

“Let’s just have a listen, shall we?”

He chuckles.

“Unless anyone else has been to an alien’s secret base?”

Rahm snorts.  Gates rolls his eyes.  Clinton shrugs.

 _She has?_ Obama wonders.   _Something to ask._

“This is Marine One, calling ground facility.”

A distinctly computerized voice replies.  Fancier than the old kits like Steven Hawking’s but no one is going to mistake it for a person.

“Approaching atmospheric craft, this is Gatekeeper.  You are ten meters from the barrier field. Drop forward speed to zero meters per second and state your business.”

“Major Harper?”

“Barrier field sounds like something to avoid.  Better do what the robot says.”

The chopper lurches to a stop and the wash from the rotors bounces off something hanging in midair.  Something like a pale blue soap bubble.

“Authenticate, atmospheric craft.”

Secretary Clinton passes a note forward to Major Harper.

“Phonetic,” she tells the pilot.  “Read it.”

“For real?”

“Lieutenant!” Harper barks.

“Yes, ma’am!” the pilot chirps.

“They’re from out of town,” Obama reminds the pilot.  “Makes sense they’d have their own way of doing things.”

“ _Superwoman_ is from out of town,” Clinton reminds him.  “Her partner is human. And don’t let her partner catch you using 'they' or ‘it’.”

“Fair point.”

Obama looks around.

“If you have any objections to gay people, put them in your back pocket and keep them there.  This young woman could be an amazing ally for us and quite frankly, this is her show. She doesn’t need our protection but we could use her help.  So let’s not give her an excuse to show us the door.”

“Gatekeeper.  This is Marine one.  Authentication is _Zod_ , Four, _Kann_ , Parsec, _Ele,_ Kelvin _, Ina-Zenn,_ Eight _.”_

“Validating.  Greetings, Marine One.  Targeting array is discriminating and setting your craft as friendly.  Opening in barrier in ten seconds. One hundred and fifty meter gap dead ahead.  Relay buoy dispatched to allow communication.”

“Welcome to Mael’Thoran.  Welcome to Sanctuary.”

The bubble peels back and the pilot slowly enters it.

“Contact on radar, moving fast,”  the co-pilot reports. “Too small for an aircraft.  Too big for a missile.”

“Where?”

“Four o’clock low.”

“What the?”

“Talk to me, people!” the Major snaps.

“There,” the pilot indicates.

“I’ll be damned.  It’s...a tube. No rotors, no jets, no anything and it’s just floating beside us, matching speed.  Just a bunch of antennas.”

“Try the _Truman,”_ Harper orders.

The pilot toggles the radio.

“Nothing.”

“There,” the co-pilot points.  “Numbers on the probe.”

“Trying that frequency,” the pilot mutters.

“Marine One, do you copy?  Marine One, respond. You are not on radar.”

“We read you, _Harry Truman_.  Stay on this channel.”

“Understood.”

Harper steps into the passenger cabin, reaching for the shutters on the inside of the windows.  She pulls them down.

“Have a look, mister president.   I was on the advance team...it’s really something.”

Below them is a diamond-shaped structure with a series of pyramids dotting the edges of the roof like guard towers on a castle.  It spans several miles of coastline. All of it was cut out of some blue material, glassy and shiny, with metal accents catching the sunlight and gleaming.  The whole thing is like the windows of Art Deco hotel.

A triangle outlined in blinking red lights sits dead center and the black suits of Secret Service agents stand out like grains of dust.

“That’s big,” Rahm admits.

Michelle leans forward for a peek.

“Beautiful.”

The helicopter descends slowly, finally connecting with a thump.  Agents press up against the doors and pound on the outside.

The lead agent cocks his head and listens to his earpiece.

“We’re clear, Mr. President.”

“Let’s go meet the new kids on the block, shall we?”

 

 

The first thing Obama notices when he gets inside is that it’s _big._ It’s more like a castle than anything.  Four huge sculptures stand in some sort of trophy hall, two at each end.  A man and a woman and each pair is holding aloft an infant child.

The small robot that zipped over to guide them turns around and casts its spotlight over one of the glassy titans.

“Lady Zor-El’s parents and her cousin’s parents.”

“Kal-El?” Obama asks.

“Affirmative.  He was not of age when Krypton was destroyed and as Lady Zor-El’s parents were the elder marriage, she is head of house.  Barring abdication or a challenge, this will remain so. As no other members of ruling houses exist, she is acting head of Council for the Kryptonian Republic.”

“Queen trumps farmboy.  Should’ve known we were dealing with the short end of the stick,” Rahm scoffs.

“If I’d known there was a woman like her, I could have told you that you were speaking to the wrong person,” Clinton quips.  “There are no others, correct? Just them.”

“Incorrect, Secretary Clinton.  No other Kryptonians seek association with the Republic at this time but colonials and ship-born exist in the galaxy.  At last census, six million, four hundred thirteen thousand, and eighty one sentient lifeforms of Kryptonian or Kryptonian-hybrid ancestry held citizenship in absentia.  It is likely that they did not suffer casualties during the disaster.”

“Earth is the _de facto_ capital until such time as a quorum of House members were to gather here and vote otherwise.”

“Earth is...” Gates pauses.  “Ours.”

“Incorrect.  A species which has not yet constructed and fielded an interstellar capable craft without assistance is not considered a member of the galactic community.  You are subject to Galactic Law and offered protections as sentient beings but not yet ready to make law. Lady Zor-El has declared Earth a protected planet of non-advanced inhabitants.  From the perspective of the Galactic Unity, Earth is a Kryptonian colony without house allegiance.”

“That’s…” Clinton sighs.  “Unsettling.”

“Someone always has a bigger gun,” Harper shrugs.

The drone zips fifty feet further down the corridor.

“This is a mid-scale fabrication bay.  Each of the twenty fabricators inside has a fifteen by twenty by twenty meter workspace and is capable of working with all two hundred and forty two elements on the periodic table and alloys and composites thereof.”

“Harper, tell me what you see.”

“Mr. President, it’s like...it’s like a bunch of metal cages with robot spiders, I guess.  Moving back and forth on rails and cutting the materials down to size. Big blocks of metal.  Shiny blue. Like a beetle’s shell.”

The robot spins to face Harper.

“A reasonable analogy.  The manipulator arms and cutting beams work the material until the overall shape is established and the the arms detach and enter the part to work inside it.  This means all structural components are cast as single pieces.”

“No seams, no welds,” Harper muses.  “Solid metal. Makes it tougher?”

“Correct.  You ask good questions!” the bot exclaims.

The lighting on it turns into a happy emoticon

“You’re kidding,” Obama laughs.  “A smiley-face tour bot?”

“Let’s just be glad she has a sense of humor,” Gates mutters.  “What is it making now?”

“The nacelle for an engine in the lower starboard hull of a _Courage-_ class cruiser.  One of sixteen in such a design.  The spaceframe itself is in a dry-dock under the water line.  It is sixty percent completed. Once the large fabrication bays are online, such ships can be built _in situ_ without the need to move and attach parts.  This will greatly decrease the time to readiness.”

“A warship?” Obama asks.

“Correct.  Lady Zor-El has reason to believe that mercenaries hired by Daxam--a sister planet to Krypton which was also destroyed--may attack her and thus Earth.  If the mercenaries fail, an attack by the Daxamite Navy is probable.”

“She is unsure if her own efforts will be enough to repel them and lacking allies among her own kind, she has decided to build a home fleet.  The design has been modified to allow it to be operated entirely by artificial intelligence due to a lack of pilots and volunteers.”

The bot sails down to the end of the corridor--almost out of sight--and flashes its spotlights at an open door.

“This way to the dining hall!”

 

 

To everyone’s surprise, the room is already filled with dozens of soldiers.  Their uniforms are all black and seemingly all-fabric as well. The Secret Service agents all tense up.

“Attention!” shouts one of them, a lanky woman with red hair under her beret.  The soldiers hop to their feet and salute. Obama returns it.

_Squad leader?_

She salutes while lifting a velcro patch on her shoulder to reveal the stars and stripes.  A woman in a dress uniform speckled with medals steps forward. She’s wearing Army markings but her uniform is the same matte black color as theirs.

“Welcome, Mister President.”

She offers her hand.

“Glad to be here.”

“I’m General Mitchell, United States Army.  I want to assure you that in accordance with Secret Service rules, none of my people are armed.  No one but the Secret Service carries firearms in the presence of the president.”

“I lead a classified military command called the DEO.  We specialize in monitoring, policing and protecting any aliens residing in the United States and reacting to any threats _related_ to aliens anywhere on the planet.”

“Gates?” Obama demands, rounding on his secretary of defense.

“I’ll find out, mister President.  I’ve seen it on the budget but only as an acronym.”

The general nods.

“Department of Extraterrestrial Operations.  We operate with a minimal paper trail because we have to assume that any of our enemies have vastly superior technology, including cyber-warfare. The more files there are outside our own network, the easier we are to find and destroy.  I would be glad to show you our main facility at any time, sir.”

“These are my three best fire-teams.  DEO-1 is led by that woman, Operative Danvers.  With her are Operatives Vasquez, Reynolds and Demos.  She has saved the people of this country -- all of them--more than once.”

“That’s an exaggeration, ma’am.”

“You did not have permission to speak freely, soldier.”

“Ma’am.”

Obama steps further away from Danvers, hoping that General Chase will follow.

“Is that true?”

“Yes.  Danvers is being modest.  In the last six months DEO-1 has been part of four operations that involved retrieving people, destroying items or recovering information that outside parties--very _well armed_ outside parties--were more than willing to kill for.  If she hadn’t done the job clean, they would have made a mess.  A huge mess.”

“Why ‘Operative’?” he asks.

“It obscures their actual rank and their original branch of service, creates a sense of camaraderie rather than rivalry.  We operate out of the Secretary of the Army and Danvers and Vasquez were in the first class of female graduates at the Ranger School.  But Reynolds is ex-FBI and before that ex-Navy. Demos is Army. DEO-2 is Marine Corps, Air Force, Army, Army,” she explains, pointing to each soldier.

“Interesting.”

“Why am I talking to you, general?  Why not the Joint Chiefs?”

“Friendly faces for you, sir, and people who have been working to bridge our interests with hers.  Superwoman, or as we call her Blue Angel, has not allowed non-DEO military personnel into this facility.  She has encountered, as have we, armed groups of government personnel hostile to her mission and the safety of aliens in this country.  So she distrusts any government contact she has not researched herself.”

“In fact, only DEO-1 and myself have been here before today.”

The tour bot buzzes.

“Lady Zor-El and Lady Luthor have completed their project.  They will be here in five minutes. Please, follow me to the banquet table.”

It leads them to a long table stacked mostly with pastries, pies and cheesecakes.  In the center off the table is a massive sword, easily five feet, outlined in donuts and chocolate strawberries.

Operative Danvers walks around to the head of the table.

“Blue Angel has a sweet tooth.  She claims that chocolate pecan pie is the best desert in the galaxy,” she explains, tapping a serving knife on one of them.

“She’s not wrong,” Clinton muses.  “I can vouch for some _amazing_ pies in Little Rock.”

“Shaved ice it is not,” Obama challenges.

“Why the sword?” Harper asks.

“Kryptonian custom predating their democratic era.  The sword of the ruler of the house, sheathed and on the table where food is offered.  She will feed you first with the weapon in _your_ presence and then enter unarmed.  Symbolically, you have the advantage.  A gesture hundreds of thousands of years old, offering an oath of protection, truce and and hospitality.”

Chase tips her head towards Danvers.

“Danvers was the first recruit I found with any significant insight into alien cultures.  Without her we never would have managed anything but assassinations and demolition.”

Two women walk in.  A study in contrasts.  One is white--palest woman he’s ever met--and the other is _dark_ , her skin plum purple and shiny.  One is curvy--an hourglass made of ivory--and the other is the tallest and most sinewy woman he’s ever seen, thick bones and long limbs and thick muscles.  One strides into the room like she owns it and the planet it stands on and he other is forcing herself to be brave and walk towards the strangers.

“Mrs. Obama.”

Clinton laughs, very quickly and very sneakily.

“Mr. President, nice to see you too.  Welcome to my workshop.”

She offers her hand which is still coated in some kind of grease or gel.

“Uh,” he prods, glancing down.

“Right.  Sorry! We got carried away downstairs with the prototype.  Smart is sexy and all that.”

She cleans her hand with the tip of some weird gizmo, burning off the slime.

“Ktharra Zor-El.  Or, that’s my legal name.  I technically don’t have a legal Earth name--thanks, racists--but Ktharra is what my birth mother named me.  I usually use the humanized version rather than try and explain double-syllable pronunciation. That was the _USS Harry Truman_ on the scanners, right?  I could tell by the deck shape.  There’s some big problems with the reactor coolant system on that shi-”

Superwoman’s breakable human girlfriend stomps on her foot.  Which is pretty ballsy.

“Sorry, sorry,” Kara laughs.

Obama re-offers his hand.

“Barack Obama.”

“Kara Zor-El and this radiant creature is Lena Luthor.”

Luthor blushes and her eyes seem to be searching for an escape route.

“I judge people by their actions, Miss Luthor.  Rest easy.”

“Sit.  Eat. Talk,” Kara suggests.

Everyone digs in.  Lena manages to find some food that isn’t diabetes on a plate and has the robot butlers bring more of it.  Operative Danvers must spend a lot of time in the field with Superwoman because soon they’re swapping war stories and Danvers is miming some escapade of hers, sighting down an imaginary rifle.

Secretary Clinton breaks the mood, just as he’d asked her to.

“Ms Zor-El,” she begins.

“Miss Zor-El.  I may not be married but I expect that to change.  I expect changes _from you_ regarding that.”

“I have to ask you some questions about your actions in North Korea, Israel and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Not to mention an unauthorized invasion of Russia.”

Kara leans back, keeping one hand on the back of Luthor’s dress.

“Liberated death camps almost as brutal as Auschwitz, put a wall up between the have-gun people and the have-no-gun people, rescued rape victims, liberated concentration camps.  Not sorry, might have gone better, not sorry, not sorry.”

“You took it upon yourself to remake the world,” Clinton scolds.

“No.  Those were cases where I told myself I would have to let you butcher each other like animals until you sorted it out yourselves.  Until a terrorist group slipped a psychoactive chemical into my food. A group funded by billionaires who you have not yet charged with a crime.  I was disoriented and my brain was flooded with my version of adrenaline. I was angry and unable to calm down.”

“So I interrupted our first real date,” she glances at Lena.  “and found somewhere to put the anger. You’re welcome, by the way.  The last nukes North Korea had went off three feet from _my fucking face."_

“The regime is not sustainable now.  They will be overthrown and they won’t be building more.”

“Do I wish I could have planned an attack on those targets with my friends at the DEO?  Do I wish I could have helped create a peaceful solution at the UN? Of course. There wasn’t time and me bringing someone along would only have risked American lives.  I was not myself.”

Kara leans forward on her elbows.

“Because in that instant, when I had to leave my girlfriend alone, scared, ashamed?  When my brain boiled with anger? I wasn’t thinking the name Kim Jong-Un. I was thinking Fred Phelps and Pat Robertson.  Be glad it worked out this way.”

“That’s not your decision, young lady.”

“Young lady,” Kara scoffs.  “Funny. Do you Chelsea that?  Or just call the first daughters that?  Just the young black women.”

Clinton has nothing.

 _First time I’ve someone stop Hilary cold like that,_ Obama muses.   _The 2008 race is sure going to be interesting._

“And it _was_ my decision.  I’m not apologizing for making it.  I’m truly sorry I didn’t make it more smoothly and with more input.”

“So that’s it?” Gates interrupts.  “Your way or the highway?”

Kara nods.

“You have plans to stop me or my cousin, I’m sure.  I can assure you they will fail. Maybe if Kal is sloppy, you manage to kill him... _pray that you don’t._  You have zero chance of kill me and if you kill that boy, who I’ve loved and protected since the moment his mother put him in my arms and I carried him to to his pod _..._ you will regret it.”

“Luckily for you, I want four things.  Don't kill my loved ones.  Should be a given but there we are.  Besides that, three issue voter.”

“One.  Civil rights for aliens, humans, gays, blacks, whites, everybody.  Right to live, work, eat and be healthy. Pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens, earthborn or otherwise.  You can do a lot,” she jabs her finger at Obama. “With some orders to the FBI about coming down hard human-on-alien crime.  There’s no case law on aliens _not_ getting civil rights.  You could direct the US Attorneys to assume that they do have rights and fix that with a stroke of the pen.  Give me the right to vote and I’ll vote for you. Hit all three of these and I’ll attend every stump speech.”

“Two.  Same-sex civil unions, gay marriage, ‘roommates contracts’, ‘cat lady power of attorney’,” she jokes, making air quotes.  “Whatever name sells papers.”

“Churches are already marrying people.  Gay soldiers are already serving. The only place they are _never respected_ is in government offices and in hospitals when their families are sick.  It’s the legal stuff that they can’t get.  Quite frankly, your caution is the problem. Don’t pretend you’re going to win Alabama, mister President.  Work with your actual friends, voters who actually will put you there. Feed your supporters rather than trying to tame wild pigs.”

Obama taps his finger on the table.   _I like what I hear...not sure I can do it._

“Three?”

Kara sighs.

“Three.  When I was twelve years old, I watched my planet burn.  Thirty one billion dead.  Because people making money on mining didn’t believe that it was actually tearing the planet up.  It was inconvenient to admit it.  Unprofitable. I’ve seen what happens to planets where money goes before the environment for too long.  You guys have twenty years to turn this climate change thing around.  After that, I’ll have to do it. I will fly around and  break anything on the surface of this rock that burns fossil fuels. I’m not watching another planet full of people I love die a preventable death.”

“You’re making demands,” Obama notes.  “Holding us hostage.”

“No.  I’m asking for legislation, offering political support to he or she who pushes it and setting deadlines for _you_ to fix problems before _I fix them_.  I'm offering protection.  Nothing attacks this planet without getting past me first.  But I’m not going to let you kill yourselves, either.  I’m saying is that the human race is under my protection and I'm putting you on suicide watch, mister President.  Because this path is crazy _._ But making those changes would go a long, long way to saving yourselves.  Those victories should come through you, through humans, through democracy.”

General Chase clears her throat.

“Superwoman has generously offered non-lethal assistance in our overseas missions, for any of our uniformed branches.”

Kara nods.

“That’s correct.  I will put myself in between threats and our troops or civilians, ferry wounded, repair sinking ships, deny chemical weapons to hostiles, that sort of thing.  I won’t kill for you. I won’t stand by and watch men I disarmed be gunned down by your people.”

She slides a digital recorder on to the table, with a post-it note around it.

“That frequency connects to a satellite I have in deep orbit.  The recording on that tape has been tweaked to work better with my hearing so I can zero in on the signal.  Make sure everyone has it.”

Obama picks it up and pushes play.  Bonnie Tyler belts one out about a hero...this time it's a woman.

“I Need A Hero?”

Kara nods.

“Nice beat.  I sampled her voice and tweaked it for female pronouns.”

Michelle laughs into a forkful of pie.

“I like you.”

Kara exhales.  Her girlfriend is more red than white now and shaking.

“That was...intense.  Let’s just act like it was a thanksgiving dinner, the drunk uncle left and we can all eat pie and be friends, hmm?  Because believe it or not, I _do_ want to be friends.”

“It’s true,” Lena Luthor interjects.  “The catering guy who did the recipes for this was showing her pictures of his granddaughter’s _quinceanera_ after knowing her for five minutes.”

“Anyone who can’t make friends...has an awful, tiny life,” Kara sighs.  “ _El mayarah,_ is what I was taught.  It means ‘stronger together’.”

Secretary Clinton is writing something down on her hand and trying to be sly about it.

 

* * *

 

###  **BONUS SCENE:**

* * *

 

**July 20, 2006  | Bruce Wayne (“Batman”)**

Gotham 

Shady Acres Subdivision 

 

The boy’s bedroom is messy, sweaty and no doubt reeking.

 _Gas masks aren’t only for dealing with Scarecrow,_ Bruce thinks.

He flips a sketchbook full of lewd sketches of ridiculously buxom women in degrading poses and every few pages, an Iron Cross, a Nordic rune or a Nazi slogan.

“I’m plugging you in now, Damian.”

There’s a USB port on the keyboard.  Good. He won’t have to reach behind the machine into a God-only-knows of crusty Kleenex and fossilized pizza.

“On it.  Putting the highlights up on your HUD.”

“This kid is into some serious shit,” Bruce realizes.  

Pictures of concentration camps with celebrities and classmates photoshopped in.  Unbalanced video manifestos about the girls in school not sleeping with him, a 'superior' specimen.  

“Yeah.  My mom could take care of him,” Damian offers.  “Who would miss some pimply racist?”

“We don’t kill.  That includes Selina.”

Damian snickers.

“Selina?  Nah, I know _stepmom_ doesn’t kill people.  I think I have some note-cards from _mom_ from solstice.  Just give me a name.”

_So easy.  Give Damian a name.  Let him put the note in a bottle.  A few days from now Talia Al-Ghul breezes through and this kid gets a poisoned arrow in the eye._

“Let’s keep that under our hat, for now.”

“Keeping it under the Bat-hat, copy that.”

Damian mutters something.

“These last couple images don’t make sense.  Bunch of latitude and longitude and this phrase over and over...Zyklon-K?  Looks like he sent it to some of the Twitter accounts.”

_Fuck._

“Damian, listen carefully.  Forward that to me, delete it from his computer and yours.  Forget you ever saw it. Then sign off.”

“You serious?”

“Yes.”

“One word answer, no Batgrowl in your voice.  Taking your word for it.  Signing off.”

Batman taps the wrist computer a few times.

“Kane Investments, Tech Sup- _whoa!_ ” Kate pants.

The voice of another can be heard along with Kate’s...a wet, breathy rasp.   Almost too growling and bearlike to be human...any maybe not, given the strange language it’s speaking.

“Bad time?” Bruce jokes.

“Little bit,” she groans.

“Do I need to cover the phone’s eyes?” he teases.

“What is it, Bruce?”

“Forwarding you something.  A threat someone needs to know about.  Do you still have contact info for Alex Danvers?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Look at it.”

“Fuck!  This asswipe is here in Gotham?”

“Yeah.  Suburbs.  Fifteen years old.”

Kate sighs.

“Thanks for taking it.  I would’ve probably killed the little shit.  You break anything?”

“Nose.  Wrist.  Shin bone, I think.”

Kate blows out a breath.

“Thanks for that.”

“Family takes care of family,” Bruce reminds her.

“Who thought crazy uncle Eddy was right about anything?” Kate jokes.  “He was about that.”

 

* * *

**July 20, 2006  | Maggie Sawyer**

National City, California 

Warehouse District 

“Darla’s” 

 

Alex leans over the pool table, sighting her cue, considering and then switching her angle.  It’s hard to deal with.  There is a lot of woman to ogle...Maggie would be up on the table at that point but Alex is only on tiptoe.

_Tall redheads with a history in the military.  I do have a type._

“Better,” Maggie jokes.  “It’s not a rifle, Danvers.  Takes a little more savvy.”

Maggie shimmies, bumping her hip into the side of Alex’s ribs.  Alex’s fingers flex around the pool cue and she composes herself.

“Ha-ha.”

Alex shoots and the cueball bounces off the six and the nine.

“Match, Danvers,” she huffs.

Maggie slaps the twenty in her hand.

“I’ll win that back.  I’m good at pool.”

“I know babe.  There’s a warning sign.”

“What?”  Maggie demands.

Alex points up.

* * *

**‘Patrons must pay their tab before playing pool with Maggie Sawyer.  Instances of Strip Pool will be immediately reported to the police.’**

* * *

“Fuck," Maggie hisses.  "Looks like this time the glass is bulletproof.”

“You’re famous.”

Alex gets her fingers in Maggie’s belt loop and hauls herself up with it, seizing a kiss once her feet are on the ground.

A couple two tables over whistle their approval.  The Maeshar scrapes her pearly, shell-covered fingertips across the Thessalian’s crests.

“Family establishment,” Darla grumbles.  “Even if I let those sex weasels back in.”

She nods at Maggie and Alex.

“I’m just petting her head,” the Maeshar pouts.

“Don’t give me that crap, Kim.  I know what those things can do.  And Megan, you should know better. You two are lucky your parents trust me.”

Alex moves back in and runs her hands under Maggie’s jacket.

“Don’t,” Maggie whispers.  “We _just_ got unbanned.  And the food is good.”

“That _was_ quite a game of strip pool,” Alex recalls.

“Was that a dumb guess on your part?”

Alex blushes.

“I was so scared you’d say no...I did some research.”

“You talked to Kate.  Found my weaknesses.”

“I did,” Alex admits.  “Good thing too. Because when I was standing there, looking at you, asking you out trying to not sound like a moron...my brain crapped out.  I couldn’t have told you my name. Kissing you was the only thing I could get right.”

“Bit more than kissing,” Maggie jokes.  “Think that’s why this table was roped off.  It’s ours now. We marked our territory.”

Someone sitting at the bar starts coughing.

“You good, man?” Darla asks.

He tries to wheeze out a reply but he can’t.  Soon he’s coughing blood, flecking the napkin and the bar.  Alex turns her head.

“What the hell?”

“Go play doctor, babe.”

Alex rolls her eyes.  Darla tosses a pair of food handler’s gloves to her.  

“Better than nothing, Alex.”

"Thanks."

Before she can even start to examine the man, another patron starts coughing, then another.  Soon half the people in the bar are coughing blood.  It looks like only the humans were affected...and Frank.

 _Does shifting into human shape make his tissue more similar?_ Alex wonders.   _Too convenient that only humans are afflicted out of thirty species in here._

Cold sweat pours down Alex's spine as she realizes where she is and what's she's doing:  examining patient zero in a bioweapon attack.

“Alex?” Maggie whimpers.

She holds up her own blood-stained hand.

“Echo.  Transmat everyone here to medical in Sanctuary and have cryo caskets and stasis pods standing by for critical cases.  Put me and Maggie in a separate area.  Contact Anvil.”

“Transmatting.  Batches of six.”

 

 

The bar is empty when Jack Green arrives, the TVs muted and looping over and over on some shitty, low budget sci-fi crap with a computerized face on a black background.  

Everyone is masked up and Green goes in right after the hazmat team, followed by Elaine Hitchcock.

“Find who did this,” he growls at one of the crime scene guys.  “Whatever fucker went after Sawyer...we find him first.  We make sure no one else does.”

"I can get behind that, Detective."

One of the techs clicks his flashlight to get their attention.

“Canister under the bar, detective.  Looks like it was on a timer.  Hidden in the crate of detergent.  That’s subtle...it even has a biohazard sign.”

“No one goes near that thing!  Someone get the FBI.”

Jack grabs the remote and unmutes the nearest TV.

“We...are...CADMUS.  Earth has been invaded and your leaders have failed you.  We alone can help you fight back. We alone deserve your loyalty.  Those who break bread with the alien filth will suffer the consequences.  But if you are righteous...if you fight with us and the true patriots of humanity...you have no reason to fear us.  The plague will pass you by.”

 

* * *

 

**July 20, 2006  | Kate Kane (“Batwoman”)**

Gotham 

Kane Estate, overlooking Gotham Harbor 

 

Kate pushes the tears from one eye, then the other.  Barda stopped and climbed up the bed when she heard her sniffles. Her massive, sweaty frame covers Kate like an eight foot, two-hundred and fifty pound blanket...crushing the twitching panic Kate feels before it grows too intense.  She can breathe in this position and Barda holds her and that’s all Kate cares about.

“What is it, Kate?”

“Neo-Nazis.  Here in Gotham.  And I think they’re targeting Superwoman’s family.”

“That was before we noticed Earth.  These Nazis...they were Germans?”

“Yes, a defeated in a planet-wide war seventy years ago.  Only war like that we've had.”

“They lost the war,” Barda observes.  “What I heard is they were crushed in the field, survivors tried and killed.  Why follow their footsteps?”

Kate sighs.

“Because humans are fucking terrible at taking hints.”

“You’re not.”

“Ordinary hints.  Your _hints,”_ Kate teases, grabbing a breast that overfills her hand.  “Are just too amazing to ignore.”

“Flatterer.  She is royalty and they are threatening her....I take it she is _not_ bound by law to hang them up by their own spines?”

“Ugh.  These might be the only people I would wish that on but no.”

“You’re trembling.  Why does this hurt so, my blood and bones?”

Kate hadn’t realized how badly it affected her until Barda mentioned it.  Her teeth are chattering and a cold sweat covers her.

“I'm Jewish.  My family..." Kate sobs.  "The Kanes lost  _family_ to monsters like them.  Three of four great-grandparents. Five great-uncles.  My grandfather had nightmares until the day he died.”

“You’re fevered, Kate.  Drink. Drink so you can sleep.  We can talk more in the morning.”

Barda holds her wrist under Kate’s nose.  Sweat and heat and _blood_ catch Kate's senses, all at once.  Fangs drop out with a crisp click of bone on bone.

_Next time I answer an all-hands about a multiverse breach, I’m asking which Earth it was from._

“You sure?”

“No stranger to pain,” Barda replies.  “This at least pleasures someone else. I’m strong, Kate.  Take what you need.”

Kate plunges her fangs in and drinks deep, her mind flashing back to the alleyway. 

_Has it been two years?_

The shock at seeing the crouching, moldering filth that crawled out of the portal.  The first monster’s spine snapping in her hands like dry wood but the second one taking her from behind, moving so fast Superman didn’t get to her after dealing with his own.  Fangs in her neck.  Bleeding out, a few gurgles standing between her and brain death.

Vomiting up bile and blood for days.  Alfred never leaving her--bless him--until she roared at him to get out because the thirst was too much.    Putting her affairs in order and calling old friends just in case before stepping out of her front door only to find sunlight didn’t kill her.  Forcing herself to remember that she enjoyed the taste of food, the taste of liquor.  Weaning herself off an all-blood diet and mimicking the normal rate of human breathing.  Wearing six layers at all times so her skin feels properly warm.   Begging Wonder Woman for help so she could relearn how to fight without killing...terrified the Goddess would reject her.

Seeing Maggie Sawyer across the crowded club and fighting back the thirst while they danced...Maggie to the music and Kate to the throb of her lover's jugular.  A sobbing confession the next morning.  Maggie refusing to leave, scarcely batting an eye about it.

Fearing every moment that the Bat-family would discover her secret.

_At least there’s this._

Barda’s blood in her throat is bliss...drinking it is like liquid sex.  It slides into her belly, rekindling the heat that the phone call ruined.

They fall asleep together in a blood-stained bed.


	19. OVER THE WIRE: Breaking News From CatCo Worldwide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "OVER THE WIRE" is a series of sound bites from news broadcasts or political speeches, covering other events around the world over a period of time.
> 
> This installment covers July 20, 2006 to July 25, 2006 and the scenes are chronological. Lena's phone call happens just minutes after the attack hits the news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIVIA:  
> 
> 
>   * Alexandra DeWitt is the origin of the "woman in refrigerators" trope. She was Kyle Rayner's girlfriend before he received the Green Lantern ring and was--surprise!--found murdered and cut up in the refrigerator. My version of Siobahn Symthe was sent to DC for getting on Cat's nerves, not jailed by Supergirl and the Flash. I felt that DeWitt, portrayed as a gifted photographer and journalist, would be alive and well in any version of the universe with Cat Grant and Lois Lane in it.
>   * The USNS (United States Non-Commissioned Ship) Mercy is the lead ship of her class and along with USNS Comfort has operated in the "hospital ship" role for the United States Navy. She deployed during the first Gulf War in 1991 to provide medical support for coalition troops and since then has participated in many hurricane/typhoon relief efforts. As Mercy is first in her class, I decided to pair her with the USS Nimitz carrier group as Nimitz is also first in class.
>   * The phrase "the constitution follows the flag" originates from Downes v. Bidwell in 1901 which dealt with an orange importer in Puerto Rico who did not feel he needed to pay taxes because it was a colony. The Supreme Court held that the Constitution did not follow the flag but that the power of Congress to make laws and levy taxes absolutely did. Obama is slightly mischaracterizing the case and he probably knows it (Harvard Law School) but he knows it sounds great and it is not a good look to correct him on a technicality when the issue is legalized murder, not orange import taxes!
> 


* * *

Lena’s finger hovers over her cell phone.  This amazing device Kara gave her as a gift ‘just because’ and she’s about to use it to betray her.

_I never was good enough for her anyway.  I just have to find a way to tell her that._

She dials.

“Foster daughter...finally seen the light?”

“Sweet sister!  Such a surprise. _Garcon!_  Another glass of your best.  For my guest.”

Lena takes in a shuddering breath.

“Lex...you can’t have wanted this,  People dying all over the world? Hospitals filled to the brim?  Teachers, bankers, police offers _dropping_ at work.  Because what?  They offered a hand in a time of need?  The American death toll is already past a thousand.  Outbreaks in Beijing, Cairo and St. Petersburg. Because our mother cannot _bear_ the thought that the universe extends past her ego.”

“What happened to the minimum suffering for maximum gain, Lex?”

Before Lex can reply, Lillian does.

“My children...you forget yourselves.  Honor thy mother and father.”

_How many times have I heard her say that before the bruises formed?_

“Fuck the fifth commandment!” Lena snarls.  “What you have done to the least of us, you have done to me.  A girl died in her friend’s arms in kindergarten this morning!”

Lillian clears her throat to say something.

“No!  Shut up, mother.”

Lex laughs at his end.  Neither of them has ever been that sharp with Lillian before.

“If you think I will _ever_ join you, mother, you’re insane.  If you think you can get rid of me so easily, you’ll need a better assassin than Otis Graves,” she scoffs.

“There was an attempt on your life?” Lex asks.  His voice is far from his usual booming, cheery tone.

“Boss lady says you need to die,” Lena quotes.  “Since I didn’t order a hit on myself, who might _boss lady_ be, mother dear?”

“You were defiling yourself, Lena!  Not only was it _unnatura-_ ”

“I’m gay, mother!  I have been since the moment I was born.  Lex protected me from you since I was thirteen   Hid it from you. Hell, he kept trying to set me up with some of his friends.”

“Is this true, Lex?”

“Lena is an adult, mother.  If you were going to change her behavior, fourteen years of taking the fire poker to her would have done it…  Why tell you? So you could beat me as well?”

“If your father was alive,” Lillian growls.

“He might have been proud of his little girl.  He might have thanked God every day that he brought me back to the manor.  I survived _you_ .  I took a company your madness nearly _destroyed_ and righted it.  L-Tech’s revenue is up, we’ve added thousands of workers and when you see what I’m doing next, you will regret having _ever_ crossed me, mother.”

“You were defiling yourself with _alien filth,_ Lena!  With that Kryptonian slut.”

“You will not speak about _Kara_ like that in my presence…ever again,” Lena breathes, forcing air past her clenched teeth.

“Goodbye, mother.  Every day you breathe free, enjoy it.  Because I am coming for you. With or without the law on my side.  With or without Superwoman at my side.”

She jabs her finger on the button for Lillian.  Just her and Lex now.

“That was...bracing,” Lex exhales.

“Never a dull, non traumatic moment with her.”

“I’d heard there was another Kryptonian ,” Lex sighs.  “But...you and her, huh?”

“Yes.  Lex,” Lena croaks.  “What I feel...it’s so intense it scares me.  The sex is intense but the way she holds me, talks to me…that’s the scary part.  It’s changing who I am. What I had with Sam, it was sweet. Ruby made me think I could be a mother.  What I have with Kara, it makes me think I can be _happy_.  Meeting her family made me wonder if I deserved it.”

The fizzing of champagne can be heard near Lex’s phone.

“For you, sis.  Wish you were here.”

Lena laughs but after what her mother said, it’s closer to a wet, coughing sob.

“The attempt on your life?  Tell me about it.”

“Otis Graves had a bomb.  Police came to arrest him, I think for shipping banned cryptography gear to Iran for Lillian’s use.  He pulled the bomb and Mercy killed him. She’s been cleared of all charges because she saved those officer’s lives...but she’s not well, Lex.  She’s still in one of our psych wards. I visit her twice a week.”

“Huh.  I always wondered what would happen when Otis bluffed someone smarter and braver than himself.  Now we know.”

Lena sniffles.

“Come home, Lex.  Thirty one dead against a thousand and counting?  Testify against Lillian and they’ll go easy on you.”

“Will they?” Lex chortles.

“Easy enough at least.  Maybe I could visit you.  Play chess, like we used to.”

“And who would speak on my behalf at sentencing, sister sweet?  You would be seen as a dutiful sister, desperate, willing to say anything.”

“Help us stop Lillian, and I can put Kara Zor-El on the stand with her nieces.”

“You’d do that?”

“She’d do that.  She’s a bit like you, Lex.  Always a step ahead of other people’s plans.  It’s why she got through your little trap in Metropolis.  So she understands the need to make peace with her enemies.  Her nieces will testify, if their mother lets them. Because you surrendering helped keep their father and their aunt safe.”

“You think that?”

“I’ve met them.  Worse than I was at their age.  One moment they want a cookie, the next moment they want to know why people burned coal when nuclear was safer.”

“You should have seen Kara with the cabinet yesterday.  By the time she stopped talking, they were wholly trapped.  They started bickering about how best to agree with her...”

“Stop!” Lex laughs.  

“If she makes you happy…” he sighs.  “That’s more than I ever managed. I’ll make a call to Interpol.  See what I can do. Perhaps I can fall on my sword in a way that misses my vital organs.  Or only a lung. I have two of those.”

“Thank you,” Lena whispers.

“I wonder,” Lex chortles.  “When will I stop throwing myself in harm’s way for you, sweet sister?  Achilles had his heel, I suppose.”

“Godspeed, Lex.”

“Fear not, sister.  The sun will shine on us again.”

 

* * *

 

 **“I am here on the US Navy’s hospital ship USS** **_Mercy_ ** **which has joined the aircraft carrier USS** **_Nimitz_ ** **and is attempting to deliver emergency medical supplies to the Chinese government on behalf of Superwoman.”**

**“Operating under the newly formed Krypton Memorial Foundation--reportedly started by Lena Luthor--she has offered tens of thousands of medical devices which, we are told, can freeze a victim’s body in order to buy time for the doctors to find a cure.”**

**“Hang on.  I have just received word that the Chinese are firing on Superwoman.  According to these reports, she is dragging the barge past their warships an…”**

 

**A armored, caped figure drops to the deck beside the anchor, brushing red-hot debris from her suit.**

 

**“Superwoman, any comment?”**

**“Two comments.  First.  Please don’t shoot at me when I’m delivering medical aid.  It’s rude.”**

**The faceplate on the armor becomes transparent.**

**“Second.  No one deserved this.  Not the humans who suffered and died.  Not their alien friends and neighbors who...who I cannot imagine how guilty they must feel.”**

**“What was their crime?”**

**“Teachers who coughed up blood and lung tissue in front of their terrified students because one little girl or little boy in their class was scared and needed extra attention in a new school, a new planet.  My best friend and next-door neighbor who is on life support because we played cards the other day. Police officers like my friend who nearly died in a bar, playing pool with some friends, because the bar welcomed all patrons.”**

**“Superwoman, what do you say to those who think this is an attack on humanity?  A terrorist strike if you will. The virus only affects humans.”**

**“I would say they would benefit from less tin foil and a study of basic tactics.  It is not a virus. The pathogen is only affecting humans with alien proteins on their skin.  Those who have touched us. Helped us. Sheltered us. In other words, it is only killing our allies.  The few we have. It benefits no one on our side. CADMUS claimed full responsibility and I believe them.  Only they benefit from it.”**

**“When we find them…”**

**“May I, Alexandra?  I have a message for racists, child-murderers and cop-killers.”**

**“Certainly.  Jack, camera on her.”**

**Kara turns straight to the camera.  Her eyes flash red and a flicker of it remains as she speaks to the audience.**

**“If you are listening...Lillian Luthor.  This blood is on your hands. You’ve already lost.  When we find you, I will make sure that the governments of the world get justice.  If you escape, I will hunt you. All the major powers on this planet lost thousands of citizens in your attack.  You made every member of the UN Security Council your enemy today. You will not be able to hide. Do not for a second think you will be able to fight.”**

**“If you kill again, I will call the wrath of every civilized race in this galaxy down upon you.  Police and soldiers from tens of thousands of worlds. Enough to turn over every rock on this planet over and over until we drag you out.”**

**Superwoman sighs.**

**“The rest of us should pray for the victims.  I will spend tonight on my knees, honoring the god of my mother and father and performing the old rituals of supplication.”**

**She chokes back a sob before speaking.**

**“Whoever you pray to, pray for for teachers and children on playgrounds, good samaritans at the side of a road, my cop friend and my neighbor.   Be with victim’s families and show them that empathy and kindness are a strength not a curse. God Bless the United States of America. God help us all.”**

**She floats off the deck, waves to the reporter and takes flight.**

**“Strong words from Superwoman.  A threat to terrorists and a prayer.  For CatCo Worldwide, this is Alexandra DeWitt in international waters.”**

 

* * *

 

“My fellow Americans.”

“Our great nation has been attacked.  Make no mistake. This was a terrorist act undertaken by an American citizen or citizens who have committed high treason against our nation.”

“The death toll is rising.  Hospitals are struggling to treat the victims, even with an unprecedented outpouring of assistance in the form of off-world technology and medical robots.  Surgeons are collapsing on their feet, sometimes from illness, sometimes from exhaustion. First responders are dying because when their face mask failed, they kept going.  They did their duty.”

“This is no longer political.  This is not about whether aliens can get a driver’s license or vote or rent an apartment or buy a car.”

“We need to decide as a nation whether we are a civilized country.  Are we a place where laws only apply to humans? Where aliens can go to work and spend time with their friends only to be used as target practice by bigots o their way home from work.  Where ‘I killed someone but they weren’t human’ is a get out of jail free card for murder?”

“Which are we...the pictures on the left or the ones on the right?”

A series of images appear, four people, each of them in two images.  On the left, a woman with teal skin and a spiral shell on either side of her head, laughing in a pool and splashing a little boy.  On the right, the same woman, naked, blood and filth between her legs, speared on a harpoon while men crack open beers and one of them urinates on her corpse.  

A man with four arms carrying four trays of beer to his friends, still covered in soot from the factory.  The same man, dead, one of his arms shoved down his own throat.

Superman laughing with school children and helping a stuck minivan out of the snow and then dying and being carried into the sky by a tearful Superwoman.

Lena Luthor walking the halls of a children’s hospital, kneeling beside a crying little boy.  Lillian Luthor at a gala with a banner that reads ‘Earth first’.

“I choose the images on the left.  Happiness over butchery. Hard work over murder in back alleys.  Courage over terror. Kindness over the arrogance of a wealthy few.”

“As a nation, we have prided ourselves for two centuries on welcoming immigrants.  Lady Liberty stands as a beacon to the downtrodden peoples of Earth. Let her continue to do so and let her torch call out to the heavens, offering shelter and American hospitality to a new group, new pilgrims.”

“As of this moment, I am issuing the following orders to my cabinet secretaries.”

“The Department of Justice will treat all violent crime against aliens as hate crime until such time as laws can be changed to integrate non-human victims into the legal code.  Any police department or sheriff’s office found covering up or engaging in such crimes will be placed under review by the Office of Civil Rights, just as we do for departments which abuse victims of color.”

“The Department of Defense will work with the FBI and CIA to bring Lillian Luthor and her terrorist accomplices to justice.  The hunt for Osama bin Laden goes on but from that we have learned a great deal. She will not evade us for nearly so long.”

“The brave members of our armed forces will welcome new comrades in their fight to protect our country and its values.  What is now known only as the DEO operates in secret and is known to only a few. It is comprised of many of the finest soldiers our nation has ever produced.  As commander in chief, I have ordered those men and women to report to duty in the newly-christened United States Space Corps and United States Space Force and be charged with the defense of our nation from threats beyond Earth orbit and from any threats that might already be on our planet.”

“I realize these are quick actions, the stroke of one man's pen. So I am sending a series of bills to Congress that would make these into laws, passed by duly elected congressmen and congresswomen and senators and signed by myself.  I encourage my Republican colleagues to honor their own values: the right to earn a paycheck, the right to be safe from fear in one’s person and one’s home, the right to come to this great land and start businesses.”

“Let this be a moment where America stood up and offered comfort to the needy.  Where we said that our values matter. That our Constitution matters. The Supreme Court has said ‘the constitution follows the flag’ so let us show that he who stands on our soil, who lives under our flag, is among friends.”

“Good night and God Bless.”

 

* * *

 

“What’s the new death toll?”

“Unchanged, Mrs. Luthor.”

“What?  Were you discovered?”

“No.  CDC servers are still responding to our virus.  My guess? Superwoman’s little trick with the freezers is taking the edge off.”

Lillian jerks her head at a guard, who jams a cattle-prod into the hacker’s ribs.

“I don’t pay you to think,” she snarls.

She looks around the war room.

“What else?”

One of the women monitoring communications stands up, shaking like a leaf.

“Y-y-your son has s-s-surrendered to the police in Paris," the tech shudders.  "He c-c-credits his s-s-sister for appealing to h-h-his conscience.”

“Hand me your gun,” Lillian snaps.

Her guard complies and Lillian walks over, puts the gun to the young woman’s belly and fires two shots, one left and one right.

“Get her to surgery.  Can’t have her _breeding_ but maybe she can still be of use.”

 

* * *

 

“Secretary Gates.”

“General Mitchell, always a pleasure.  You’re making quite a name for yourself.  Word is the Pentagon might need to become a Hexagon.”

She nods.

“It should.  This is a completely different skill set.  Training on non-Earth weapons and reverse engineered weapons.  Zero-gravity combat exercises. Cross-training as pilots. Training in culture and diplomacy.   We do more with the bullets we _don’t_ fire than with the ones we do.”

“Noble goal.  Coffee?”

“Yes, thank you.”

Gates pours himself a drink.  

“The perks of being a civilian,” he jokes.  “This meeting isn’t on my schedule. What do you need?”

“I’m tendering my resignation, effective in thirty days.”

Gates arches an eyebrow.

“Explain.”

“I’ve been in the service almost thirty years, sir.  I have two strong candidates lined up to take over my duties.  It's too much for one officer.  I want to get them in place before my job becomes Senate-appointed and there's hearings with senators from Texas railing about Mexicans.”

“You’re not wrong about the Senate's reaction but thirty days is short.”

“There’s an operation we’ve been planning.  If it goes well, I plan to field promote the soldiers in question and I would hope to have your backing.”

“What’s the operation?”

“Rescuing an alien crime lord.”

“Beg pardon?”

“There’s a galaxy wide syndicate run by a family called the Ktennos.  Thessalians. They focus on smuggling, trafficking in and out of Daxamite space and running gambling rings on any planet with money.  Turns out you can make enough money smuggling freed slaves out and wanted criminals into Daxamite slave pens to buy a few dozen star systems.”

“That’s the all female race?  Daxamites are...bad Kryptonians?” Gates asks.  "I have a small mountain of files from you and Operative Danvers.  I'm still nibbling on the snow at the top."

“Correct on both.  Thessalians--thessies for short--can destroy anything they can get within thirty meters of, their soldiers customize their warships for _fun_ , and they live...well they live until something kills them.  The current head of the syndicate is Levanna Ktenno. She has been doing this for almost nine thousand years.  Which is pretty old for a pirate...dumb ones don’t get old.”

“This sounds like someone we don't want to rescue, General.”

“You’d think that.  Except that the boss was shot down while trying to check on her daughter here on Earth. She has standing contracts with the three largest mercenary companies in existence:  Black Nebula, Shadow Side, and the Pulsars. She pays well and her bribes keep them out of the crosshairs of governments and navies.  In return, they help her out any time she asks and their elite compete to end up in her personal guard.”

Gates sighs.

“So this is a powerful person stuck on our planet who might get hurt.”

“Worse than that, sir.  We’ve received word from Blue Angel’s listening posts that all three mercenary companies are sending parties here to rescue her.  Safe to assume that her captors will not be shown any mercy.  Planets have been invaded for less. If she dies, no reason to think they won’t go back to orbit and take it out on the rest of us.  Make an example.”

“What’s the ask?”

“I want to send DEO-1 in using some recently acquired stealth craft and send a company of US Marines with them.  Fighting will be heavy so I want some mad dogs in the mix. DEO-1 has Straightjacket but even she isn’t crazy enough to do this much damage.  Marines always seem to fit the bill.”

“Where is the hostage being held now?”

“That’s the part you’re not going to like…old missile complex in Russia.  That’s why I want the stealth ships and DEO-1. They’ve been in and out of worse and done it quietly.”

“I’ll have to ask the President.”

Mitchell sips her coffee.

“Naturally.  Would you like me to send the intel we have on the VIP and the mercenary ships coming to get her?"

"I'll need it to sell this idea," Gates admits. "If your people pull this off, they'll have my vote for whatever promotion you think they need."

 


	20. All the Stars in the Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":  
> Where some events in space affect our girls back on Earth, a jailbreak happens, Astra upgrades her relationships, dragons (and other pets) need some TLC, Kara knows how to ride out Lena's feelings, alien pirates do the CIA a solid, Kara is a starship nerd, and Lena builds a warp coil.
> 
> OUR NEXT EXCITING EPISODE:  
> Where Kara has a new experience with her body and it's one-star, the girls need some TLC and they phone in the workday, the President has some requests of Kara, Alex has a job to do, Kara is unable to help her and feels bad about it, alien mobsters have alien gun molls, Alex is shook by a realization about a rescue, Vasquez's love of her work scares some US Marines shitless, the enemy learns not to fuck with either of the Danvers sisters and General Chase makes a move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **STYLE GUIDE:**  
>  " _Italics in quotes_ " are foreign languages.  
> " _< Brackets>_" in quotes and italics are passages translated from a foreign language. Some passages I will not translate.  
>  _Italics_ are thoughts or observations and always the POV character.  
> [Brackets] are interactions with artificial intelligence and cybernetics, verbal or non-verbal.  
>  **Bold and prefixed lines** are text messages (example--KDKapow: is Kara's main handle)  
>   
>  **Bold and block-quoted lines** are recorded messages, radio communications, songs or poems, etc.  
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Bold text between horizontal lines indicates notes, emails or or writing.**
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> **REFERENCE GUIDE:**  
>  Please see "For Your Eyes Only" in CODEX for DEO personnel, roles and codenames.  
> Please see "Coursework for a Minor In Alien Studies" in CODEX for information on alien races in the multiverse.  
> Please see "Kryptowiki: Cast and Crew" for a list of all characters. (upcoming)  
> Please see "Kryptowiki: Mechanical's Handbook" for a breakdown of key gear and ships.  
>   
> 

###  **August 2, 2006  | Astra Ina-Zenn (“The Butcher”)**

Vhoc’s Gate Prison, Davarr System  
Geosynchronous Polar Orbit over Davarr IV 

(2,328 light years from Earth) 

 

She is still asleep, she thinks.  This is a dream.

Someone is talking--no, screaming--at her from a very long ways away.  They need to speak more clearly. Something hot and painful strikes from behind and the world becomes quiet and cold and still.

Powerful arms clutch Astra and she collides with metal.  Hard.

The pain shakes her out of it.  She is pinned against a bulkhead by Fendra’s body while everything in their shared cell drifts away through a tear in the hull.  Fendra has her mouth sealed tight over Astra's and every time she sniffs from the emergency breather, she exhales, forcing air into Astra's throat.

Never releasing her, Fendra glances to the right and leads Astra to a control for the emergency airlock.  She laces Astra’s fingers into the mechanism.

They topple into the corridor together, once again pulled by gravity and surrounded by air.

“Fen?” Astra groans.  “What happened?”

“Astra!”

Fendra presses her forehead to Astra’s.

“You’re all right?  I thought I’d lost you,” she whispers.

“Not so easy to kill,” Astra jokes.  “You hadn’t noticed?”

Astra flicks some tears’ from Fen’s cheeks.

“Fendra, what hit us?  That wasn’t a mechanical failure.  That was a weapon.”

Fendra taps one of the wrist controls for her implant.

“Byara.  Status report.  What just attacked us?”

“Apokoliptian ships.  Big ones.  Starbreakers, I think.”

_Why are we still here?  Why bombard a prison with a monster like that?  Why attack one station when you can burn a system and rupture stars?  Unless…_

“Byara?”  Astra asks.  “What are their markings?  Is it Darkseid’s face?”

“No.  Black starbursts with red claw marks.”

Fendra locks eyes with Astra.

“Could it be?”

“She was the sort to want a rematch, General.”

“It would explain why they slagged the defense turrets then stopped shooting,” Byara adds.

“Are we in the light of the white star?” Fendra asks.

Byara laughs.  She’s the soldier Astra sends into places where _everything_ has to die.  Both of them have had to talk Byara back from the brink.

“I can taste it,” Byara hums.  “Never felt stronger.”

“Can we get a lock on my husbands signal?”

“Already done.”

“Coluan wing?”

“Yes, General.”

“Override the lighting to mimic a red sun and kill the gravity in his cell.  If we are boarded, do not resist. This pirate is...playful. This is a game to her and I’m the one she wants to play with so if you don’t get in her way, you’ll be fine.”

“Fendra or myself will contact you when I have more orders.”

Fendra has reached into Astra’s hair and is quickly braiding the lock of black hair.

“Be done with him, my love.”

“Are you asking me to kill my husband?” Astra demands.

Fendra laughs.

“Rao forbid.  No...I trust you'll do that for your own reasons. I’m asking you to tell me the story afterwards.”

 

The attack was cleaner than the remaining guards expected.  They readied themselves for mindless brutality -- Apokoliptian tactics -- and it looks like the pirates went block by block, meticulously quashing resistance.

Astra passes the bodies of dozens of guards for each slain parademon.  She steps over the broken body of a Helgrammite pirate. Someone has opened his armor to remove something -- something that was on that chain around his neck -- and left a thermal charge on his chest.

_Uniforms?  Identification tags?  Funeral rites?  Impressive for a pirate band.  This is an army.  Crimson Hammer must have increased her reach considerably._

At the door to the Coluan wing she encounters a raxxie with one pistol in all four of her hands.

“May I go in?” Astra asks.

“Best you do.  Boss is bored.”

Astra nods.

The raxxie holsters one pistol long enough to smash the door control with her fist.

Her old foe is wrapped head to toe in twitching scales and leaning on an immense warhammer.  Beside her stands a pale--seemingly human--woman with golden hair and no need for an oxygen mask despite the ruptured fuel line spewing lethal fumes.

“Crimson Hammer.”

“Astra Ina-Zenn.  Last of the War Queens.”

“Am I to fight you unarmed?” Astra asks.

“I like her!” Hammer’s companion chortles.  “She’s...stupid or brave or both.”

“No, Astra.  I’m not here to fight you.  I’m a married woman now...after a fashion.”

“Congratulations to you and…”

“Serah.”

“Greetings, Serah.”

Serah smiles, showing off two huge fangs in each corner of her jaw.

“Blood Earth?” Astra asks Hammer, nodding at Serah.

“She’s smart too.”

Hammer nods at the door.

“Your husband is fucking that Coluan slut, right inside that door.  Given that this doesn’t even make you twitch...might I presume someone else is warming your bed, Astra?”

“Mmm...” Astra teases.  “If there were another War Queen, why would I admit it? Darkness is the best armor, after all.”

Hammer laughs.

“For those of us without a death wish, I suppose it is.”

“You’re here to murder him, yes?”

Astra nods.

“If I can bring myself to.”

“Sweeten the deal,” Hammer offers.  “This…”

She holds up a data chip.

“Unlocks a ship docked in bay four.  My engineer did a bit of scrounging...found a derelict from the Daxamite navy.  She'll fly...you can keep the silks and slave's collars if you like.  It’s no dreadnought but it’s large enough for you and your soldiers.”

“In exchange for this gift?” Astra prods.

“Did you know your niece has set up beacons declaring Earth the capital of the Republic?  Calling all citizens to join her?”

“And to think,” Astra jokes.  “She always hated her mother’s politics lessons.”

“The price,” Hammer sighs.  “Is if I give you this, you hunt down your niece.  Bring the exiles home to her. I think…I think a universe with no Kryptonians for me to fight would be terribly dull.”

Astra steps up to the door control for Indigo’s cell.  Serah bounces excitedly on her feet. Her bare feet. Only a gauzy yellow gown separates her body from the cold, the fumes and the smoke from electrical fires.

“Can I come with?” Serah begs.  “I’ve not actually had Kryptonian blood before.  Ooh!  Haven’t had Coluan blood either.”

Astra nods.

“I’d rather go back to my love without washing my hands first.  I’ll hold them down, you drink them dry. But make it _hurt_.”

 

* * *

  

###  **August 2, 2006  | Lena Luthor**

National City, California

Harbor and Third Streets, Starsea Lofts

Kara’s Apartment

 

Lena prayed on the way over.  Prayed that Kara wasn’t home. Prayed that she could just leave the note, return the gifted tech and go.  Disappear before any other awfulness could happen to Kara with the name ‘Luthor’ trailing after it.

She fondles the key that Kara gave her--unthinkingly--when she first visited.  She reaches for the doorknob before the last of her courage can flee her.

The door opens before she can reach it.

“Lena, hi!”

“C’mon in.  I can put on some clothes.  Ooh! I should show you this gizmo I’m working on.”

Lena’s plan shatters.  She is faced with a grinning Kara in workout clothes -- sports bra and what look like spandex leggings to mid-thigh -- with little triangular symbols written in gold-colored marker all over her body.  The sharpie in question is tucked behind Kara’s ear. Led Zepplin is thumping over the speakers and some mad science project is spread on the kitchen island and a half-dozen containers of chinese takeout are scattered on the counter.

This is the creature she’s supposed to spurn?  Reject? Drive away?

 _God hates me,_ Lena decides.

“You all right, _fitheach beag?_ Your feathers are scruffier than usual...”

_ <”Little Raven” | Galiege a.k.a. Irish > _

“Please don’t,” Lena whispers.  “Please don’t speak to me like that.”

Kara’s smile falls away.

“I didn’t know you found it demeaning.  Sorry.”

“Can’t have that!” Kara jokes.  “How am I supposed to keep the good ones if the pet-names don’t appeal?”

“You need to dump me,” Lena croaks.

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Because...why?”

“Because I deserve it!” Lena snarls.

Lena falls to her knees--shivering, wailing, sobbing--having used everything she had to force out a handful of words.

Kara sighs.  She kneels down beside Lena and brushes hair off of Lena’s cheek.

“No.  You don’t.  You deserve to be listened to and held a-”

“No,” Lena moans.  “No I don’t.”

“...and comforted and kissed and cuddled and pampered.  When you’re ready you can tell me what’s scaring you.  Deserving is about _other people_.  We’re shit at deciding what we deserve.  Even me.”

“Can I touch you?” Kara pleads.

“Why?”

_Why would you want to?_

“Because the floor isn’t comfortable and I’d rather my lover not lie here crying when she could be somewhere more comfortable.”

_My lover._

Two words.  Two words were all it took to shatter what little was left of Lena’s mind.  Her vision is blurry--did she hit her head? brain damage?--and what she hears, she can hardly process.  She must have assented to Kara touching her because she’s in her arms. Hands are splayed out wide, supporting her at the shoulder-blades and behind her knees.  Warm lips are pressed to her forehead. Tears that are not her own are falling onto Lena’s face.

“They call this a bridal carry,” Kara sighs.  “I think I get extra credit for carrying you over the threshold, too.”

Lena is laid in Kara’s bed.  Sheets and blankets are fluffed and shaken out and Lena is lifted again, this time carried over to Kara’s couch.  Fingers tease open the buttons of her suit jacket and take it away.

Kara lies down on the opposite end of the couch and lifts Lena’s legs over herself.

“I think we both need a nap.”

Lena wakes to see Kara on her cell phone.

“Is this Doctor Hamilton’s office?  Uh-huh. Yeah, hi. So...you don’t know me and I can’t ask you to give me anything, I get that.  But my name is Kara and I’m,” Kara sighs. “I’m Lena Luthor’s girlfriend and she’s in a bad spot and I want to help her.”

Whatever the person at the other end said, Kara didn’t like it.  Her grip on her phone is stressing the barrier fields she installed on it.

“No, doctor.  You listen _closely._ I will do anything--everything--you need me to do but I cannot take Lena to a hospital right now.  She’s sober, her vitals are steady...yes I know! Do you want me to upload the data? Because I can.  She’s _hurting,_ doc, not _dying_ and I’m pretty sure that a hospital is going to only shame her.  Besides...anything she needs right now, I can give her right where she is.  Meds, sensory deprivation, sedation, surgery, name it and I will bring it to her.  So what does she need?”

“Yeah, I’ll put her on.”

Kara taps lightly on Lena’s tummy.

“You awake, honey?”

“Yeah,” Lena rasps.

“Can you see if you can get your doctor to do a jerk-ectomy on herself?  I need her to calm down and let me help you.”

Lena groans.

“Hand me the phone.”

Kara sighs and hands it over.

“Yes, doctor.  It’s me. Give Kara whatever she needs.”

“That’s not wise, Lena.   Does she have a license?”

“No.  Not that she needs one to tuck me in on her couch.  And if she needs to she can have a doctor here in seconds.”

“I would feel more comfortable with you here, in my clinic, where I can take proper notes and we can work carefully and prudently on your condition.”

_Something is very wrong with Dr. Hamilton’s word choice there.  I’ve heard those words before, in that exact tone._

“My lawyer will be over in half an hour with a paperwork to release all my medical records to different practitioner and to settle my account.  Speak to anyone else about my case and you will be facing a lawsuit, doctor. Now, describe our entire crisis management exercise to Kara.”

Kara’s eyebrows are at her hairline, two gleaming swoops, and she seems to be holding something back.  Lena hands the phone over.

“What kind of butcher are you?” Kara finally demands.  “Lena clearly needs to see an _actual_ psychiatrist.  You’ll be getting a visitor shortly.  I suggest you don’t fight her.”

Kara tosses her phone into an armchair.

“That woman…” she begins, jabbing her finger at the nearest scapegoat.   Her phone. “...is not on the up and up.”

“No,” Lena groans.  “I didn’t realize it until she asked me to come in.  The way she said certain words, it was exactly the way Lillian used to talk about mental health.  When she told Lex that if I got therapy, I couldn’t stay in the manor...I was listening at the keyhole.”

Kara chuckles.

“Given how he kept you from falling completely apart when you were younger, I’m starting to think I need to send Lex a fruit basket.”

“Doctor Hamilton must be on Lillian’s payroll,” Lena groans.  “Which means that Lillian is up to date on you and me. I think I mentioned Alex to her once.   Maggie...maybe?  Hard to remember right now.”

“Oh, shoot!  I almost forgot!” Kara exclaims.

She reaches for her cell phone, thinks better of it and just stands very still for a moment.

“Alex is going to go over there and spook the good doctor.  She has cover since it involves a national security issue and an alien.”

“How, exactly?”

“Because an _alien_ who is important to _national security_ needs to be on her A game if they need me and they won’t get that if your doctor is a threat to your well being.  I _almost_ feel bad for the doctor. Alex is really in a state, what with Maggie still in quarantine.”

“Terrifying,” Lena chortles.  “But legally, will that bullshit even work?”

Kara smiles.

“It has before, actually.”

“Sorry, Lena.  What were you coming over to tell me?”

“I contacted Lex.  I used that phone you gave me and I used it to call _him.”_

“Huh.”

“That’s all?”  Lena demands. “Huh?”

“Yeah.  Huh. Because I wouldn’t have thought he had it in him to turn himself in.  He must care for you, too.”

Kara lifts the quilt, slides back in and lays her legs on top of Lena’s this time.

“Back to cuddling,” Kara yawns.  “If you need to go anywhere, you’ll have to beg for it.”

 

 

Lights flash and dance against the far wall, yellow and red and white.  The sounds of pops and hisses and a growing scent of ozone fill the room.  All of it coming from the kitchen where Kara had abandoned what looked like wires and metal spheres and a disturbing number of those miniature nuclear power cells.

Lena nudges Kara with her foot…which proves surprisingly challenging.  If she pushes any harder, she’s going to hurt herself and Kara’s skin has yet to so much as bend.

So she slides her foot farther up and taps her big toe on Kara’s navel.

“Lena,” Kara groans.  “S’nice.”

_Tapping works._

“Kara, darling.  Your at-home mad science kit is exploding.  I think...it's beyond me, whatever that is.”

Kara jerks upright.

“Awesome.”

“Some girls buy flowers,” Lena grumps.  “You try and blow me up.”

“It’s not _exploding,”_ Kara scolds.  “It’s talking to itself.  The shards are dividing and interacting, differentiating.”

“Meaning?”

Kara tilts her head back and laughs.  Loudly.

“Meaning that I have an AI on my kitchen counter that exceeds anything ever built.  Not sure what to call it. I mean, technically it’s still Tier 12 and the individual shards aren’t _smarter_ than other shards bu-”

“Kara!  Put it in cavewoman for me?”

“So what makes an AI more powerful, once you get past someone like Kolex, fully self aware...is  numbers and uncertainty. Kolex is three quantum compute cores in the implant and 16 in the robot chassis but they’re all _one being._ Tier 6 is two AIs, running parallel but isolated.  By the time you get to Tier 10, there's hundreds, communicating constantly in a minimal simulated environment.  Physics, matter, the whole thing... Tier 11 adds additional layers of complication and Tier 12 scales it up to simulated cities, planets and so on.  A universe in a bottle.”

“They’re each less powerful, correct?”

Kara nods.

“Having two hundred AI’s running different answers to a question with three cores each puts out more options and better reactions.”

Lena chews her lip.

“And having a simulated world...introduces, what?  Errors?  No.  Wait.  It consumes processor power but it provides variation at the starting point.”

Kara tosses a stuffed animal at Lena’s head...because praising Lena is a tradition and because no one beat emotions out of Kara.

“Boop!  So smart.”

“What makes yours different, Kara?”

“Sourcing and scale.  I used the records of a cybernetic race that died out a while back and a neural-mapping program meant to transfer personalities from living bodies into AI cores.  The Tol'rai knew they were dying so they sealed the memories of their last generation in data cores and shot them into space.”

“So that…” Lena points vaguely at the kitchen.  She’s glad she’s looking the other way…imagining what that looks like is safer than knowing.  “Is a resurrected species?”

Kara nods.

“More or less.  Their memories injected into the baseline AI templates will make for the most varied group of programs ever used in one network...which I can install in my body along with Kolex.  Ordinarily it would suck the host body dry but I can power a lot more than usual being a Wor-”

Kara sighs.

“Being a Destroyer.  If hit with sufficient charge, certain points on my subdermal armor bleed thermal energy that equals that of a small starship.  Way more than is typically dedicated _just_ to a computer.”

“The magic marker. You were marking incision sites,” Lena realizes.

“Exactly.  Kolex and I can weaken my skin long enough to implant it.  We introduce nodes there and the nanites anchor them to the composite. Quick chemical insult to one of the symbionts and the armor will 'heal'. Grow out around them, carrying trace neutrons with it  What's left of the Tol'rai will be inside me, under the outer layers of armor.  Safe.  Alive again...after a fashion.”

“Amazing.”

“Thanks, Lena.”

Kara smirks.

“I have a project for you too...an even cooler one.  Since you’re not dumping me that easily.”

“Oh?”

“I want you to be the woman who brings humanity into the galactic government.”

“Doesn’t an ambassador need...confidence?”

“They do,” Kara chortles.  “But before humanity gets an embassy, someone needs to build a warp-drive capable ship...using no scavenged parts.  Fuel scavenging and examining prior designs is allowed.  Once a human _builds that_ and flies it for even a moment at faster-than-light.  Boom.  Price of admission.”

“You think I could do that?”

Kara reaches over to the stack of magazines on the end table, flips through them and finally grabs a fat stack of spiral bound papers.

“I did a test bed using all Earth-built manufacturing tools.  That’s the design.  It'll take you a while because I was using a hacked Kryptonian tool-chain.  It was within what Earth tech _could do_ but at optimal efficiency.”

“You’re helping me.  You are giving me a design that depends on physics that weren't going to be proved in my lifetime. This has to be cheating.”

“It's legit.  I'm telling you it can be done. I have the prototype parked outside.  I’m biased...extremely biased...towards the project lead.”

Lena idly flips through the first few pages.

_Titanium alloy frame, ceramics, carbon fiber.  Foam steel.  Some sort of enriched layer of shielding around the cockpit.  Coolant water used as extra radiation shielding. Magnetic bottling of the fuel.  Quantum computer uplink rather than an onboard core.  Room for one.  This is doable.  This is something I could start tonight at work.  Something that could really happen._

She fishes her reading glasses out of their case.

“Well, then...best cook me dinner.  Don’t interrupt me while I’m reading, woman.”

Lena swore she saw Kara’s pupils dilate and her cheeks flush at the dismissal and the notion of her being Lena’s housewife.

 

* * *

 

###  **August 3, 2006  | Kara Danvers**

Magnetic South Pole, Earth

100000 kilometers geosynchronous orbit

 

 

Kara stares.  Before she can forget, she taps in a few commands and dispatches the Coluan vessel she bought Alex to the Sanctuary.  The spaceframe was programmed for cultural surveys, which was perfect. The drives were rigged for long-distance travel, the hull coating is invisible to pre-interstellar species’ scanners and it was packed with cameras, sensors, probes, computers.

Anything a xenoanthropology team could want to record a newborn sentient race’s first steps.  Coincidentally the same things a soldier would want to spy on her enemies.

The cloaking field switches on and it vanishes.

_Long as you don’t name it Gertrude, sis._

The Kryptonian infiltrator she purchased for herself is drifting in high orbit of the south pole.  Waiting. Waiting for a pilot, an owner...perhaps a friend?

 _I’m just projecting.  Then again, we know so little about these ships,_ she reminds herself.  

She read that the tech these ships are derived from was created the last fifty years of the imperial period but it sat unused for millennia.  All records about the ships are scrambled beyond even what her father could see.

[Kolex, she’s...amazing.]

[Indeed.  To think that a _Rao’s Shadow_ was adrift so close to the outer rim.]

[That’s not what I meant!  I think I get why men like their toys so much!]

A few meters from her outstretched fingertips is the hull of the _Undying._ The only thing Kryptonian about the design is the color.  Silvery blue. The main hull tapers to a knife’s edge point--quite literally--and slowly flares out to a grooved cylinder.  She’s slender...well inside the golden ratio of warp bubble to cubic meters of hull space. Less than thirty meters’ width in the midships over a hundred and ten meters length.  Tucked into each of the ten grooves are something Kara has never seen before on any remotely modern spacecraft: manipulators.  Long and thin like a squid’s tentacles and each running half of the length of the hull.

[Kryptonian.  Biological race.  Sentient. Cybernetic implants and genetic engineering.]

[Kolex?]

[Onboard intelligence.]

[Neat.]

[Kara, my friend.  Be careful. This ship carries at _least_ a Tier 12 artificial intelligence.  It is hard to quantify. Perhaps once my new friends are installed, I can tell you more.]

[Greetings, ship.  My name is Ktharra, daughter of Zor-El and Alura El, scion of Erok-El.]

[Greetings, Ktharra.  You carry noble blood, so we will not harm you.  You have been touched by the glory of the Empire, so you are my equal.  Hail Krypton!]

_So that’s creepy.  These were built ten thousand years after the fall.  Why are they checking me for Destroyer tech?_

[Thank you, ship.  What are you called?]

[My kind is not named.  Names designate living things.]

[If you were destroyed, would anything exactly like you still exist?]

[No.]

Kara smiles.

[Does your existence indicate complexity?  Are you less chaotic than the matter in your occurring surroundings?]

[Extremely complex, yes.]

[Then you are, by civilized definitions, alive.  You are a creature more than the sum of its environment and capable of thought, speech and awareness of its surroundings.  It is a pleasure to meet you. Would you like a name?]

[Yes.]

[ _Invictus_.]

[Explain.]

[I am the last survivor of Krypton’s Great Houses.  I was going to name you _Undying_ but that did not feel right once I realized you were intelligent.   _Invictus_ means ‘unconquerable’ in Latin and is the title of a well known human poem.]

[Humans?]

[The native sentients of the terrestrial, nitro-oxy, liquid water, life-bearing planet behind me.  It is my home. Humans took me in and one family loved me as their own child.]

[I am...sorry.  Know that if I was aware of Krypton’s need, I would have done everything in my power to save it.]

[Thank you.  It makes me feel less lonely.]

[Lonely?   Emotions.  It has been so long since a compatible organic was nearby that I have not been exposed to neurological patterns like that...I hope I am not ‘bad company’.]

Kara laughs.

[Can you power up the outer hull?  I want to look inside you.]

[Done.]

The entire ship _glows_ bright as the sunlight cresting over the planet.  Kara blinks to clear her vision. She moves slowly towards it and something _fizzles_ and there’s a small opening in the hull she can pass through.  It’s as if the hull were a projection, not a solid piece of machinery.

Kara passes through what feels like a thick fluid and finally enters a space shaped like the inside of an egg.  At first it is empty but soon a cockpit, living areas and a small workspace from, rising from the floor.  It’s as if the whole ship is either made of nanites--which wouldn’t work--or it is filled with them in the crew compartment.  Either that or something really amazing is going on.  Given that an intergalactic consortium sent this as a gift to the Kryptonian Imperium and that the hull seems more holographic than real, Kara would bet five dozen donuts that nanites are the less exciting explanation.

Everything is white except for the black chair by the controls and a gray-and-blue trimmed bed.

[You’re unlike any other technology I’ve ever seen, _Invictus_.  Far beyond the tech Krypton had back then.]

[That is...partially accurate.  My intelligence and central core was a gift to House Zod to celebrate the conquest of Colu Prime.  When I arrived in this galaxy, I....]

[Arrived?]

[Correct.  The Glorious Supremacy gave ships...constructs...like myself to each of the thirteen Great Houses active then as part of an effort to bring the Imperium and the Supremacy closer to an alliance.  I was flown on autopilot from the materialization field at Heleus to Krypton’s orbit. As I passed Kryptonian vessels, I analyzed their technology and adapted myself to better match and complement it.]

[House Zod is gone, _Invictus_.]

[I gathered as much from intercepted transmissions.  It appears that your house’s exile was correct in killing their scion.  I do not know where the ship given to House El is now, though I still sense her traces in my consciousness.  She exists. I will work to call her here. It is fitting that you would receive me as spoils.]

[Exile?  You mean Kal?]

[He was sent away, yes?]

[So was I.  Because we were in danger, not because we wronged our house.]

[I see.  So his lack of tutoring in your ways is...not deliberate?]

Kara laughs.  There's next to no atmosphere in her helmet so it’s really only making a funny face...she still enjoys it.

[Failure in his pod’s data core.  I was supposed to arrive with him but my flight was rerouted during the surgeries to make me a Destroyer and passed near a black hole, delaying me by eighteen Kryptonian years.  Kal was raised by humans. It gives him perspective quite different than my own.]

[I am sending you biometric details on nine lifeforms of the humans, Kal and three human-Kryptonian hybrids.  One of the hybrids is still inside a human female.  Eleven individuals of various sub-sentient domesticated species. Under no circumstances are your actions to harm them or your inactions to allow them to come to harm.  These hybrids are to be treated as blood members of House El, and their mother's bonding to Kal represents the union of Lane-El.  The others are House Danvers, allies to House El…and this one, Lena, is my betrothed.  Treat her life, comfort and wellbeing as you would my own.]

[As you say.]

Kara runs her fingers over the bedsheet.  It feels like satin. Cool to the touch, like it’s transferring heat out of her skin.

_This bed is missing something._

Taking off her helmet, Kara shakes her hair loose.

“ _Invictus_ , please activate stealth systems and approach the planet.  Land...uh...how do I give commands?”

A small cloud of black spheres drops from somewhere above her and coalesces into a plate at Kara’s fingertips.  Light dances across the surface.

“Land...here. Keep all jumps within the following parameters.”

“Those are quite small.”

“Background radiation levels safe for Earth life.  Lena is human.”

“Of course.  Transiting on your mark, Ktharra.”

 

* * *

###  **August 3, 2006  | Lena Luthor**

National City, California

Harbor and Third Streets, Starsea Lofts

Kara’s Apartment

 

Lena manages to gather her suit jacket up before it gets horribly wrinkled.  One of Kara’s hoodies is wrapped around her -- cinched with a bathrobe sash -- and it is heaven.  Still warm from laying in a laundry basket that Kara left in the sun. She took another bathrobe’s sash -- this one not washed -- and draped it around her neck like a scarf.  Kara’s scent is unusual, touched with ozone. Like standing in a forest of cedar and pine a few moments after a powerful thunderstorm. Lena can smell nothing else.

It’s been days since she’s done more at her place than just sleep.  Meals, reading, writing reports -- all of that here -- and Kara has let her transform an otherwise trendy sunroom into a engineer’s war room.  A mess of papers, server racks, huge touchscreens for parts design, a small lathe in the corner and sales charts pinned to corkboards.

“Laundry day waits for no woman,” Lena sighs.  “End of the hall, end of the hall.”

“Aha!”

Lena opens the door and two lizards nearly her own size -- four feet long at least -- rouse from their slumber when light enters their lair.  Bearded lizards, she supposes, given the ring of bony spines behind their heads. One is grayish-white, a bit like the scales of a fish and the other is golden with a shimmer of red where the light catches the top of her head.

Then they lunge, spreading their wings--fucking wings, of course Kara has dragons in an unused closet!--and the gold one goes for Lena, digging their claws into the hoodie.  It soon hangs from her like a baby koala, rubbing its hard snout against her collarbone and flicking a forked tongue against her chin.

“H-h-hi.”

The creature makes a squeaky sound, maybe a roar.

“G-g-good dragon,” Lena coos, rubbing her shaking fingers down the back, between the wings.

Her bluetooth headset is in her pocket but that will have to do.  She fishes it out, turns it on and flicks it into the middle of the floor.

“Call Kara.”

“Calling…”

“Hey, honey.  You have to see this th-”

“Why are there dragons in the laundry room!” Lena shouts.

“Right.  So the white one is Vhoc, he’s male.  The little lady in gold Flamebird.”

“Course she is.”

“They’re tame.  The imprinted on me when they hatched but I’m guessing you smell enough like me that they’re all over you.”

“That would be an understatement,” Lena hisses.  Vhoc’s tale is swishing down the collar of Lena’s shirt, like he hopes to find Kara there.

She’s forcing herself to use long words and a flat tone to try to push back her own anger.

“Try petting Flamebird’s head, Lena.”

“If I get eaten…”

Kara laughs.

“You won’t.  They’re smart.  Like, chimpanzee or gorilla smart.”

Lena strokes Flamebird’s head and the beast's whole body shifts color.  Pale green splotches roll down the scales, all the way to the tail.

“Like a chameleon,” Lena observes.

“Yup.  They react to people that touch them.  Skin temperature, sweat on the hands, vocal cues, so on...that’s her body’s reaction to what you were feeling.  Empathic.”

“The carpet in here is green,” Lena tells no one in particular.

“Yeah.  So maybe you were afraid and she reflexively tried to hide.  Cat Grant’s little boy has one as an emotional support animal.”

“That’s terrifying, the idea of her with a dragon.”

“Well, I didn’t give her the recipe for the high-oxidation food.  No way it can spit fire.”

“I’m sorry...what?” Lena hollers.

Flamebird chirps unhappily.

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, so their ancestors had venom sacs--like a spitting cobra--and over the centuries when we bred them, we selected for the ones with two sets of venom sacs.  The right diet and…”

Lena chuckles.

“The venom they produce is oxidized and reacts to air.”

“Yup.  The droplets that mix come out napalm-y.  Small amounts. More a party trick than anything.”

“They’re Kryptonian?”

“Yeah.  Pygmy _galata._ They get to be about five feet long.  Bred down from animals that were ridden in war and later used in a couple of mid-air sports.  Domesticated species spread pretty quick, Lena. Exotic pets are a trade good. So there’s a guy in Bolivia who’s been breeding these for centuries,” Kara explains.

“Did the other two eggs hatch?”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

“Neat.  Keep those handy.  They hatch hungry and they’re like geese.  First thing that notices them, shelters them, feeds them, that sort of thing...is their mom or dad.   Keep some bacon on you and they’ll imprint on you for sure.”

Lena laughs.

“I’ll move the eggs into my work room.  You do realize what people will think if a Luthor has a perch in her office with a _dragon_ on it?”

“You’re a sexy, sexy, witch, babe.  Own it.”

“I was actually going to introduce you a couple days ago. I don’t think they like being cooped up.”

Lena chuckles.

“The stack of scorched tennis balls suggests you’re right.”

Kara sighs.

“I’ve got work tomorrow so we’ll have to wait until six or so before I can pick you up.  I want to take you picnicking, maybe we can listen to that album together then I’m going fuck you into mush in the jungle...I’ll bring you donuts for breakfast.  From that fancy place in CatCo Plaza.”

“Is that all,” Lena teases.  “Do I need to stop by the sporting goods store?”

“No.  Please don’t.  It’s not an _Earth_ jungle and I don’t want to cross-contaminate.”

“Do you plan on always just _dictating_ date night _?”_ Lena asks.

“Heavens, no.  I didn’t want you to feel you had to put on some big production when you’re clearly worn thin, _grá mo chroí.”_

Lena smiles.

“I won’t turn down wild jungle sex and donuts. _I am human._ ”

 

Lena tosses her laundry in the machine--turns out that was last door on the _right--_ and carries the eggs, one at a time, back to her workroom.  She splits her time between the practical--the new material for car bumpers--and the fantastical.  She’s managed to machine one coil for the warp drive so far.

She must have worked herself to exhaustion because Lena wakes up to three scaly little faces poking at her hair and her cheeks.  

“Hi,” she rasps.  

One of them--a tiny little thing with emerald scales--licks her tongue the moment that she opens her mouth.  

“Bleh.”

“Here,” Lena coos, pulling out the beef jerky she pocketed.

All three are green, two of them an identical vivid, dark shade and one a almost fluorescent lime color.

“Now what am I going to name you?”

“Kolex!” she calls out.

The robot appears around the corner a few seconds later.

“Ah, good, they have hatched,” he observes. “And made a friend.”

_Is he capable of sarcasm?_

“Kolex, are you capable of sarcasm?”

“Goodness no.  A sarcastic robot?  What’s next? Pet rocks?  Reclining chairs?”

Lena snorts.

“What to they need in post hatching care?” she asks.

“They all seem to be female, so their first meal should be very fatty.”

“How can you tell?”

“Shape of the skull.  The brow ridges are smaller and the overall outline more square.”

“Huh.”

“Wait.  Lena?” Kolex asks.  “Were there three eggs or two?”

“Two, why?”

“Oh my.  Twins in an egg do not happen to the pygmies.  That indicates that these two…”

One of his metal hands waves at the smaller, darker ones.

“Must have had the non-pygmy genes recessive and those triggered, cascading over the other genes.  They are higher intelligence and more training will be needed. Kara would be wise to consult zoning laws.”

“How big will they get?”

“They will be--genetically speaking--the apex predators Kryptonians originally tamed.   Fifteen feet nose-to-haunch, another fifteen feet of tail. Wingspan of forty. Torso and legs similar to that of a draft horse such as a Clydesdale.  Their muscles should be more than sufficient for sustained flight on Earth with or without a rider.”

“We’re gonna need a bigger laundry room.”

“You’re going to need a bigger office,” Kolex corrects her.  “ _Galata_ are notoriously loyal and protective of their riders.”

 

* * *

  **BONUS SCENES:**

* * *

 

 

**August 3, 2006 |  Jack Marquette**

Islamabad, Pakistan

US Embassy, Office of the Director of Facilities (cover for CIA Station Chief)

 

Jack notices his office door is open just a crack.  He reaches for the pistol he keeps tucked inside his suit jacket.  He nudges the door open slowly, scanning the dark space.

"We come in peace, human."

He spins and finds himself face to face with a pair of female aliens with white scales and some kind of weird tendrils on their heads.  Both are wearing full-body black catsuits with a silver outline of some kind of cloud over the left breast and some crazy-looking pistols strapped to their thighs.   One is leaning on his desk and the other is cleaning something -- maybe a rifle -- that makes the props on _Star Trek_ look antique.

The one leaning on his desk hops forward and offers her hand.  She's cute -- hair tentacles or no hair tentacles -- short and curvy.  After a year overseas, the way the catsuit clings to her breasts is more than a little distracting.

"I'm Anyala, that's my aunt Osana.  And we don't want to hurt you."

"Looks like you're from out of town."

"Eh.  We usually hang out in Vermont.  Just thought we'd take a vacation.  How would you like to be the most famous Station Chief in the CIA?"

Jack raises the pistol.

"What makes you say that?"

She yawns.

"Pull the trigger, Jack.  Get it out of your system."

He fires and the bullet swings  _around_ her, over and over until it clatters to his desk, a little crescent of hot metal.  Right in front of her is a seething mass of purple smoke--purple  _something_ at least--that collapses in on itself.

"Black hole is even better than a bulletproof vest," she chuckles.

"This job was hard when there were only humans," Jack gripes.

"Back to our offer," Anyala sighs.  She pats a fancy-looking digital camera she plopped on top of his laptop.

"How would you like proof of Osama bin Laden's current home address, floor layouts and defenses?"

"Nice try.  Even if you somehow could use space magic to find him, no way you have all that intel."

Anyala disappears.  Just flickers out like a reflection in a pond.

An unseen hand grabs between his legs.

"Pity," a voice purrs in her ear.  "If you weren't so rude...I'd finally get a chance to find out what's so special about fucking humans."

"Watch the video.  You decide what to do with it."

The other alien disappears -- along with her rifle -- and leaves.  Only the creak of floorboards signals that they are even still in the building.

"If you want a hand with the raid, we'd consider it.  No need for a cash payment...his youngest wife is  _hot._ "

Jack hurries over to the camera, turns it on and starts flipping through the photos and videos.

"Well," he laughs.  "I'll be damned."

 


	21. OVER THE WIRE:  Breaking News from CatCo Worldwide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "OVER THE WIRE" is a series of sound bites from news broadcasts or political speeches, covering other events around the world over a period of time.
> 
> This installment covers August 6, 2006 and the scenes are chronological.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE #1:  
> While in the TV show, the President played by Lynda Carter is named "Olivia Marsdin" I decided to rename her to "Elizabeth Marston", the name of the wife (and co-creator) of Wonder Woman. It will be easy to follow because she'll usually be "Senator..." or "President..." rather than her first name.
> 
> AUTHOR'S NOTE #2:  
> I highly recommend the movie "Professor Marston and the Wonder Women" which details the real, actual, poly relationship (with BDSM elements) between two academics and a former student that led to the creation of the comic.

 

 

 

 

 

> **“We are coming to you live from the Senate floor where Senator Elizabeth Marston of New Mexico has just introduced the Amnesty Law for Integrating our Extraterrestrial-American Neighbors, or ALIEN for short.  Though the bill only has six co-sponsors currently and was introduced just moments ago, President Obama has already spoken in support of it.”**
> 
> **“Senator Marston, who lives in Taos, has previously been instrumental in passing laws regarding illegal immigration, visa, and border patrol issues, a history which may prove essential in convincing her colleagues that she can manage this complex issue.”**
> 
> **“The only Republican to speak out on the bill thus far is Rand Paul, who, while not saying how he would vote, warned the government against ‘overreach’ with regards to aliens.”**
> 
> **“For CatCo, this is Siobhan Smythe.”**

 

The recording pauses and a waitress comes by--wobbling on jellied legs--unready for the scene before her.  Superwoman and Wonder Woman in _her_ coffee shop, nibbling on brownies and chatting like old friends.

“She’s pushy, isn’t she?” Kara teases.

Diana says nothing.

“I can see the collar, honey.  It’s classy. I like how the inscription is Greek, too.” Kara whispers, noticing how Diana shivers and reaches up to stroke the gold-trimmed collar around her neck.

“How?”

“Supersenses, remember?  It’s all right. Secret’s safe with me.  How can I help?”

Diana hums into her coffee and the waitress hands Kara a plate of blueberry muffins.  

“Thanks, Kerri.”

The poor woman’s eyes are watering.  Maybe she doesn’t get many superheroines in a town with two stoplights, a church and--as it turned out--an infestation of still-larval hydras hiding among the alligators in the Everglades.  

Then again, Kara doesn’t always get to fight Greek myths either.

“Y-y-you’re welcome.”

“So, Diana...what does the esteemed Senator need?”

Diana sighs and holds out her lasso.

“We need to prove this can work on you and then take you to Congress.  My mist--the senator feels that the public will respect testimony given under the lasso’s bind.”

“Kinky,” Kara teases.  “Just tell me when and where.”

 

* * *

 

Maggie stirs beside her.

“Alex,” she groans.  “Make your fucking phone stop.”

Alex reaches over Maggie -- the phone ended up on the wrong side of the bed -- only to find a pair of gentle but insistent incisors has snagged her nipple.

“Go for Danvers,” she gasps.

“This is Vigilante.  I’m sending a file to your secure account.”

“What file?”

“The file on your father’s murder and the autopsy report.  I...” Vigilante sighs. “Shay wants me to give it to you since I will be retiring before I can crack it.  Hope it brings you and your sister some peace.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Danvers, from everything I’ve heard, you were the daughter we never got to have.  So thank _you._ Take care of yourself.”

Alex sniffles.

“Thanks.  You too.”

Alex hangs up.  The ‘new email’ indicator is already flashing.

“Maggie, do you mind?”

“I do mind,” Maggie grumbles, her words only semi-legible with her lips on Alex’s skin.  “These are amazing and I like the noises you make.”

Lacking other options, Alex rolls over and lets Maggie follow.  She opens the autopsy report, flicking through a few paragraphs of summary.

“Fuck.”

Maggie releases her.

“Not enough time,” she yawns.  “Wish we could.”

Alex laughs.

“No, fuck as in frustration.”

“Oh.”

Alex turns the phone around.  She taps on the middle paragraph.

“This right here says my dad’s liver and lungs were normal.  Baseline. In fact, the median weight and density for a man his age.”

“So?”

“So he suffered from asthma because he used to smoke a pack a day until mom made him quit when I was born.  He and mom _both_ enjoyed alcohol a bit too much...it’s why I’m so careful.  So there’s no way he had a textbook perfect lungs and liver.  I don’t think they ever talked about it much. I had to nag the hell out of mom to find out about the smoking.”

“Fuck,” Maggie agrees.  “That means it’s not his body?”

Alex grins.

“Exactly.  Someone who knew his face, his DNA and so on but not my family medical history made up a fake corpse.  My guess is the DNA matched so no one dug deeper. And why would you do whatever weird ass cloning needed to fake a dead body…”

“Unless you needed the live one somewhere else,” Maggie realizes.  “This is huge, babe.”

Alex sighs.

_Let’s hope it’s good news.  Takes a hell of a setup to do that.  Unless Kara did it...it was some group I’ve never heard of._

 

* * *

 

> **A well dressed, dark haired woman stands in a television studio.  She’s taken off her suit jacket, rolled up her sleeve and strapped some sort of metallic, silver-and-green contraption to her forearm.  Two solid bands of material and a solid plate that covers her arm three quarters of the way around.**
> 
> **Behind her stand two men, one dressed like a cowboy and one dressed like an auto mechanic.  A brand-new Mustang sits behind her, hood open.**
> 
> **“Hello.  My name is Lena Luthor.  If you’re like me and you have a supervillian for a brother you might feel the need for some personal protection.  If you’re like me and like getting your hands dirty on the weekend, you might want the best tools you could possibly get.  If you’re like me and can’t go thirty seconds without checking your email, why waste a pocket? Why not get a supercomputer that you you can wear?”**
> 
> **“And why not get them all in the same place?”**
> 
> **The cowboy turns to her, hand dangling near his holster.**
> 
> **“Get away from my car, missy!”**
> 
> **Lena leans back against the Mustang.**
> 
> **“But she’s so sweet!” she pouts.  “I think Maria likes me better, anyway.”**
> 
> **“Ain’t warning you again, woman.”**
> 
> **Lena reaches for the door handle and the cowboy raises his gun and fires at the back of her head.  A bubble of silvery light surrounds Lena and the bullet slams into the barrier. She reaches to the tool and taps something, turning the shield off.  She makes a fist and what looks like a hydraulic piston surrounds her arm, made of nothing but white light.**
> 
> **She throws and the piston retracts, slamming forward just as she connects with his chest.  Her assailant sails across the studio and crashes through a series of plywood walls.**
> 
> **Lena pops the hood and taps something else on the controls mounted over her wrist.  Two socket wrenches rise out of the bracer’s plating and she reaches down and cracks one off, using it to tighten the nuts holding the battery in.  The intro to a YouTube video is projected on the inside of the hood.**
> 
> **The stunt man returns, whipping his duster off to reveal a dark gray shirt made of little square plates.  He scoops up the bullet and holds it up for the camera.**
> 
> **“This is not a blank.  It’s a .44 magnum.”**
> 
> **He wriggles out of the shirt and lays it on the hood of the car.  His chest is gleaming with sweat. Lena arches an eyebrow.**
> 
> **The scene fades and the voice-over begins, still in Lena’s voice.**
> 
> **“Presenting the Ratchet multi-tool and the Turtle self-defense vest.  The newest products from Cosmic, a member of the L-Tech family of companies.  Cosmic. Gear from up there, now available here...at a price that’s out of this world.”**

 

 

Lena turns to Kara who is worrying a hole into the blanket with her fingers.

“You could have been hurt, babe.”

“I had a transmat rigged to get me out if the shield didn’t kick in.”

“That’s smart,” Kara murmurs.

“Are you not OK with this?  You said it was all right if I sold the reverse engineered tech…”

Kara lunges, pushing Lena back into the cushions and opening her shirt with a yank, scattering buttons everywhere.  Lena yelps in surprise.

“You were hot in that,” Kara pants.  “So brave.”

She leans down while also lifting Lena up and takes Lena’s lip in between her teeth, holding it while Lena’s trembling fingertips find Kara’s belt.  Kara turns Lena’s face away from her, biting at the ivory flesh of her neck.

“G-g-glad you like it.  I think we’ll hold off on the one with the guns.”

Kara grabs Lena’s hands and yanks them off her hips.  She pulls her own belt loose and lashes Lena’s hands together.  Kara waits, one eyebrow lifted.

“Green light,” Lena gasps.

“Good.  No more shop talk, unless you want me to put a dildo on the end of a socket wrench,” Kara jokes.

Her powerful grip clamps over Lena’s hipbones and pulls, grinding Lena on her despite Lena’s total inability to move, let alone reciprocate.

“It took me six tries to make the eyebrow raise look convincing,” Lena admits.  

Kara laughs and pulls Lena up--hard--slamming their bodies so tightly together that the bones in Kara's pelvis press into Lena.  A flash of white heat fills her brain.

“It wasn’t straight but it was close...too close.  Have to show you what you’d be missing.”

Lena is _fucked._  Every movement, every bit of strength, every angle and point of contact is under Kara’s control.  All she can do is lie back and scream as Kara works her magic until just before sun-up.

 

* * *

 

Sam swipes through her phone’s feed.  Lena and Kara, kissing. Kara flexing a bicep and Lena pretending to spill her drink.  Kara feeding Lena a forkful of pasta at Gio’s...the same restaurant Sam and Lena always visited.  Lena giving a presentation and to reporters and an unmistakable, dark skinned hand raised to ask a question.

 _They’re cute together._  

A tear slides down her cheek.

_I should’ve held on tighter to Lena._

“Mom?”

“Yes, Rubes?”

“Field trip form.”

Ruby slides the form onto the table and Sam signs it without looking.

“You all right?”

Sam nods her head.

“Yeah, baby.”

“You should invite Aunt Lena over.  It’s been so long…” Ruby whines. “I could cook!”

Sam laughs.

“We just bought this house, sweetie.  It would be suspicious if it burned down.  Go have fun at Lexi’s, okay?”

Ruby goes up on tip-toe and Sam kisses her forehead.

“Sure, mom.”

Hours later, Sam finds the still-unsigned field trip form sitting in the box of mail by the door.

_Fuck.  So what did I sign?_

She gets her phone out and calls Lena.

“Sam,” Lena chortles.

_Someone’s in a good mood._

“What can I do for you?”

“Ruby wants me to invite you to dinner.”

“Just Ruby?” Lena asks.

Sam sighs.

“No.  I should be a grown-up and meet Kara properly.”

_Meet the woman who beat me._

“Friday night?”  Sam suggests. “Ruby will cook, apparently.”

Lena laughs.  

“Sounds good.”

 

Two cold showers and three sets of vibrator batteries later, Sam is finally ready to face the weekend.  

Then the voice returns.  That voice in her head in a language she’s never _heard_ but somehow still knows.

_“Erok, whose courage shattered chains...”_

_“Shala, whose rage toppled kings…”_

_“Itak'jun, from who all knowledge flows…”_

Sam shrieks as a thousand awful memories, none of them hers, bury themselves in her brain.

* * *

Lillian turns off the audio program.  Nothing.  No reaction.  She is alone now.  No one to see. So she kicks the damned casket.

“Mother, mother, mother,” Lex teases.  “So moody.”

“Thought you were in prison,” she snarls.

“I am...physically.  But I ran out of books...” Lex sighs.  “...and your network security needs some work.  What are these?”

Lillian wipes her brow with a towel.

“Kryptonian pods.  From what we can tell, military.  Larger hulls, some openings we think are weapon mounts.  Exhaust ports arranged to lower heat signature.  The coating absorbs most of the visible light spectrum and radar can’t get a good read on them.”

Lex drums his fingers on a workbench.

“Impressive.  So why are you trying to crack them open?  Do we need more of them running around?”

Lillian tosses a tablet computer to him, forgetting he’s a hologram.  She curses, reaching down to her own tablet and emailing them instead.

“These are Kryptonian audio recordings,” Lex realizes.  “Detailing a…”

He whistles.

“Brainwashing process for cloned soldiers.”

Lillian nods.

“All we have to do is get them open and play the files.  These monsters will obey us.  Then we can _show_ the world why they should fear aliens.  Why they need us.”

Lex sighs.

“CADMUS is a vanity project, mother.  Changing public perception against aliens is never going to work...not for long. People are too stupid to form an opinion and stick to it.  Did you see Lena’s new television ad?”

“I did,” Lillian snarls.  “Disgraceful.”

“All television ads have sex in them now, mother.  I was more intrigued by the products.”

“What about them?”

“If Lena can start pumping out tech like that, people will forgive the aliens _anything_.  How many people do guns kill every year, mother? No one takes action. Now imagine a gun that built you a flying car or built you a video game and some of the guns are blue and pretty and like to have sex...how on Earth do we make something so menacing that it outweighs those benefits?”

Lillian looks back to the ships.

“By using these.  These aren’t just Kryptonians, Lex.  They’re cyborgs. Genetically enhanced.  Their version of super-soldiers. If I can get just _one_ of them open, I will have a weapon that can burn cities, destroy nations, do anything.”

“...maybe enough to kill Superwoman," Lex points out.

“She’s a diva.  Superman is the real threat.  We'll kill him first."

“That he is,” Lex sighs.


	22. Friends in Low Places and Enemies in High Orbit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":  
> Where Kara has a new experience with her body and it's one-star, the girls need some TLC and they phone in the workday, the President has some requests of Kara, Alex has a job to do, Kara is unable to help her and feels bad about it, alien mobsters have alien gun molls, Alex is shook by a realization about a rescue, Vasquez's love of her work scares some US Marines shitless, the enemy learns not to fuck with either of the Danvers sisters and General Chase makes a move.
> 
> OUR NEXT EXCITING EPISODE:  
> Turns out Ruby can actually cook, her Aunty Lena comes over, her mom needs a girlfriend, Ruby acts out at school and gets in trouble with a lawman...woman.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHORS NOTE:**  
>  I realize that the experience of periods varies from woman to woman and month to month. Kara's new at this. Not every woman reports increased libido but some do and I also realize that period sex is not everyone's choice but I am referencing it anyway. Lean leaning into her lesbianism and breaking Lillian's ideas of propriety is part of how Lena rebels.
> 
>  **AUTHORS NOTE #2:**  
>  The crazy gun Vasquez finds is based on three concept weapons (or concepts) that I did some background on. It is theorized that a creating sufficiently focused point of intense energy, like from several high powered lasers could create a black hole and some work has been done to prove this. The singularity power cores I describe are an artist's interpretation of a Kugelblitz (German for "ball lightning") which is a theoretical power source for spaceships. The gun version merely uses bigger lasers to do it **over there** on the face of someone you don't like. An antimatter "gun" is comparatively easy. It fires shells that contain matter and antimatter in a magnetic bottle and when they hit something, the bottle breaks. The electrical beam weapon is the same principle as the arc pistols. A laser goes out first to ionize the air so it will conduct, then the electrical charge. I merely scaled it up to roughly the peak output of Hoover Dam.
> 
>  **GLOSSARY:**  
>  JSOC -- Joint Strategic Operations Command  
> KIA -- Killed in Action  
> WMD -- Weapons of Mass Destruction
> 
>  **CODENAMES:**  
>  "Angel team" -- sniper team assisting Operative Vasquez  
> "Crowbar team" - diversionary team led by Operative Vasquez.  
> "Getaway team" -- rescue team led by Operative Danvers.  
> "Operation Houdini" -- The mission to rescue Lyra Ktenno.
> 
>  **STYLE GUIDE:**  
>  " _Italics in quotes_ " are foreign languages.  
> " _< Brackets>_" in quotes and italics are passages translated from a foreign language. Some passages I will not translate.  
>  _Italics_ are thoughts or observations and always the POV character.  
> [Brackets] are interactions with artificial intelligence and cybernetics, verbal or non-verbal.  
>  **Bold and prefixed lines** are text messages (example--KDKapow: is Kara's main handle)  
>   
>  **Bold and block-quoted lines** are recorded messages, radio communications, songs or poems, etc.  
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Bold text between horizontal lines indicates notes, emails or or writing.**
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> **REFERENCE GUIDE:**  
>  Please see "For Your Eyes Only" in CODEX for DEO personnel, roles and codenames.  
> Please see "Coursework for a Minor In Alien Studies" in CODEX for information on alien races in the multiverse.  
> Please see "Kryptowiki: Cast and Crew" for a list of all characters. (upcoming)  
> Please see "Kryptowiki: Mechanical's Handbook" for a breakdown of key gear and ships.  
>   
> 

###  **August 7, 2006 | Kara Danvers**

National City, California 

Harbor and Third Streets, Starsea Lofts 

Kara’s Apartment 

 

Lena is shaking me.  Which hurts. Something is slicing at my abdomen, so being moved is not pleasant.  

 _I’m hurt which makes me angry at her and being angry at Lena is something I never want._ Kara grips the edges of the bedframe—hard—so she is not tempted to touch Lena.

_How can I be angry at her?  This woman above me, warm and soft and scared for me._

“Kara,” she whimpers.  “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah.”

“I woke up and there was blood on my hand and you were groaning, _gra mo chroi,_ ” she murmurs.  “You were in pain.”

“True statement."

Scraping her memory, Kara realizes that all she did last night was stop one armed robbery.  One meat-head with a oversized handgun he barely knew how to hold.  Not enough to bend her skin, let alone break it.

_Did I exhaust my powers somehow?   One way to find out._

Kara puts one arm over Lena’s back, pressing my lips to her shoulder...then gives Earth’s gravity the finger.  Up, up, up they float. Before long they bump into the ceiling, arms shielding Lena from the impact.

 _Sometime soon, I want to kiss her up here.  A whole new series of surfaces we haven’t made out on._ A powerful, painful throb between Kara's legs and a vision of ravishing Lena reminds suggests that it would be beyond stupid to start anything right now.

“Kara?” Lena squeaks.  “We’re on the ceiling.”

“Experiment,” Kara whispers.  “Be sure I still have my powers.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.  Next time though, we should try ceiling sex.”

“Can we go down now?”

When they get close, Lena slides out of Kara's arms into the bed.

“You’re bleeding, Kara.”

“That makes no sense.”

Lena throws the sheets back.  Sure enough, blood.  No way it is human. It’s cherry red and slightly luminescent.  

[Kolex, is there any data on fertility and Worldki...Destroyers?]

[No, Lady Kara.  Which indicates that they were not altered.  Aside from passing on the boosted genetics, there were no changes.]

[Which means that…]

“Fuck.  Lena?”

“Yeah, darling?”

“I think I just got my first period.”

“Oh.  So it was a little late?”

“Technically, no.  Part of our genetic engineering was treating social ills.  We solved teen pregnancy by offsetting the onset of puberty with actual fertility by five cycles...about eight Earth years. Gives us time to get used to having sex drive and find out what we like while not risking offspring.”

Lena nods.

“Brilliant plan...unless there are no Kryptonian women here to guide you through this.”

“I have a medical database, Lena.”

She smiles, a tiny curl only at the corners of her mouth.

“If you think that will be enough, you’re naive, my love.  There are other facets.  Kolex? Are there any significant differences in side effects between humans and Kryptonians?”

His chassis has floated into the room, carrying a platter of toast and tea.

“No, Lady Luthor.  The main differences are increased regularity compared to the human baseline and duration.  Lady Kara will be fine within four Earth days.”

“Lucky bitch,” Lena teases.

“Tell that to my guts."

“I didn’t mean it like that, Kara.  Mind floating down now? I can hold you...maybe I can telecommute today.  I remember how scared I was the first time.”

Kara looks down and finds she is still in mid-air.  She can’t control her flight, not fully.  It’s like a muscle being numb.

“Crap.  It’ll take me a minute to get down.  This is dangerous.  This is not okay.  I have stuff to do today. I’m supposed to have a briefing with the president and attorney general about boundaries on my heroing, game night, first day at the office…”

_And it is not safe to leave this apartment...one drop of my blood is a weapon if it ends up with the wrong sort of people._

“Kolex?  Were there any Chrysalis pods, cloning devices or tissue lathes on the scout ship?”

“Stand by.  It appears that the _Glory of Exploration_ class was typically outfitted one tissue lathe per crew member, one pod and a basic cloning system.  The exact rigging varied.”

“Because they were also long-voyage vessels and sometimes the crew would just start a small colony,” she mutters, remembering some tall tale of her father’s.

“Penny for your thoughts, darling.  Unless you want more for them...stock options?” Lena teases.

Kara laughs.  Finally.  She floated Lena up to the ceiling, promised to _fuck_ her on said ceiling and got stuck in midair and somehow hadn't found it funny until just now. 

_Must be in a bad mood._

“You can just ask, Lena.  I’m a Destroyer. Even without the surgery I would have a combat edge on any ordinary Kryptonian...and I’m leaking genetic material.  If someone had a basic cloning system, they could make an embryo. A full system would let them grow a brain-dead clone and implant a personality scan.  Maybe even let them clone the symbionts. If they had a Chrysalis chamber, they could use it to rebuild the body of any compatible species, using my genetics. ”

Lena swallows.

“And Lex has been known to steal from Kryptonian wrecks,” she realizes.  “He was the first on site with the LuthorCorp Dynamics team so it’s possible we don’t even know what was stolen."

When Kara touches down, Lena wraps around her to keep her grounded.  Kara kisses her cheek, lazily, trying to burn away the fears with Lena's scent and her skin.

“Got it in one, Lena.  Depending on what he has access to, Lex could get a drop of my blood and Worldkiller-ize himself.  Usually my blood is safely contained but not now.”

She sighs.

“Doesn’t change the basics.  I’m staying with you today. I’m pampering you.  We can talk about how you’ll make it up to me later.”

“Please don’t tease me, Lena.  I am so turned on right now that all I can think about is sex with you.  And it’s like a breeze is enough to turn me on. And it scares me.”

She hums, eyes lit up with some thought she won’t share.

“Kolex, fetch those chains Kara had you make.”

"Wait...what?"

“Darling, the sheets are already ruined.  Besides,” she whispers.  “Orgasms are painkillers.  Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle.  If something hurts, tell me.”

“I am weakened and at the mercy of a Luthor...and I never want that to change.”

 

* * *

###  **August 7, 2006 | Alex Danvers (code name "White Knight")**

Alaska, Aleutian Islands

United States Space Force (formerly DEO) Facility

Forward Operating Base “Seaside”

 

 

Alex ducks under the craft’s nose, running her fingers along the jet-black tip.  The sensor array inside lights up, leaving an outline of her hand on the glassy surface.

“Transfer complete.  This vessel is now in service to the United States of America.  Please state your name for voiceprint.”

“Alex Danvers.  Alias to White Knight and allow Operative and Lieutenant as prefixes.”

“Biometrics programmed.  Powering up.”

Vasquez is standing beside her, neck craned up at the ship.  Shaped like an arrowhead with dozens of engines at the back and a flexible hull, it was the best choice for the job.  Notches cut into the leading edge of the wing house the plasma cannons and a pair of sealed hatches, one top and one bottom, cover the good stuff.

The craft is painted gray and bears no markings.  Where the Xinsi logo should be, the fabricators etched the DEO’s seal: an eagle with a starburst in one talon and a shield in the other.

_Probably for the best.  No need to let the mega-corporations know that Kara has their intellectual property._

Vasquez whistles.

“Our own spaceship.  Thank you, Blue Angel.”

Alex chuckles.

“Thank you...you kidding?  How’s your implant? It’s been six hours.  I was screaming in pain for _ten._ ”

“My dad hit harder and my mom was meaner,” Vasquez shrugs.

_Cheerful._

“She was going to give us a Kryptonian ship,” Alex reminds Vasquez.  “Until the hearings. This may be bigger but...there’s nothing as high tech as those.”

“Yeah, well.  Like I always say, fuck Senator McConnell.  Fuck him with a coal miner’s shovel and no lube.”

Alex laughs.

“Let’s go whip the boys into shape, shall we?”

“Aye-aye, Danvers.”

When she reaches the edge of the platform, Alex looks over the Marines assigned to the mission.  

Fifty soldiers fresh from Iraq, pulled from two completely different regiments and headed by the most seasoned gunnery sergeants available.  Hard, brave, lethal men...and at least two women in the back. Their gear suggests support roles: radios and engineer’s tools.

 _Hope that they’ve seen some real action,_ Alex worries. _I’d like to bring them back._

“Attention!” Vasquez shouts.

Alex steps up to the edge of the platform.  

“I am White Knight, leader of Fireteam Snowstorm.  The one behind me is Straightjacket. If you want to find out why, tell a short joke…”

[Asshole.]

[Just making you practice with the implant, Suze.]

“Your superior officers recommended you.  You are _still here_ because I checked your records and I am confident that none of you will get into any hateful, bloodthirsty, rapey, or generally fuckbrained trouble in the field.  Because if we screw this up, nuclear war is the _good option_ and once we hit dirt, I can’t babysit you.”

One of the guys in front laughs.  Alex hops off the platform and lands with one hand on her baton, two paces from his face.

“If that sounds like too much, little boy, disappear.  Now.”

“Ma’am, no ma’am!”

Alex triggers her baton and points to a pallet of gear.  As she had hoped, the sudden transformation from a normal-looking steel rod to a crackling mass of energy got their attention.

“Everybody strip your body armor and get into those.  Thirty minutes. Straightjacket will help you with the specialized gear,” Alex explains, pointing to the back rows where six women and four men are wearing clearly distinct kits.

“Everyone else will work with Gentleman or Ice.  You have two hours to learn the weapons and armor.  You won’t regret it. Respect the gear. If you lose any, report it to me on the double so we can demo it.”

“Once we break international waters, we no longer exist, not on this one.  We will brief you in the air, consider it your in flight movie. We are going to go in quiet, get these people out and leave nothing but spent brass behind.  Understood?”

“Aye-aye!”

Alex taps her baton in her palm, letting the armor dissipate the charge.

“When did they start chopping the balls off United States Marines?  Sound off like you mean it!”

“AYE-AYE!”

Alex nods.  Vasquez smiles.

[Gotta love Marines, right Danvers?  They’re so cute when they’re angry.]

[We see any standouts today, you take their names.  We need to get fireteams seven and eight filled in.]

[Copy that, ma’am.]

Vasquez, Demos and Reynolds start drilling the leathernecks on how to use the railguns and arc pistols while Alex works with Echo to create a briefing video.  

 _Why record a nice, professional, by the book briefing when I can have an AI make it look like I did?_ Alex wonders.  

[Echo, in the final version, please make sure I don’t seem like I’m about to piss myself.]

“Marines!” Alex hears Vasquez bellow.  “Saddle up. We are airborne in three.”

Alex looks over to their ride.  Along the back of the wing, seams can be seen, outlining twenty small triangular slots and four much larger ones.

[Echo, are the drones programmed?]

[Heavy drones are programmed as interceptors and loaded with plasma cannons and mid-diameter railguns.  Drones six through twenty four are unassigned.]

Alex taps her foot while a hundred things that could go wrong occur to her and how different loadouts on the drones might help.

[Load the remaining drones for close support.  Light diameter, rapid-fire guns, incendiary missiles and medical pods.  For the big bird, charge all plasma, arc and and laser weapons to full. Load up the centrally-mounted railgun with solid shells and low-velocity fragmentary.  Prepare two uranium impact shells. Five kilotons each. Enhance with helium three to burn off the excess radiation.]

[Processing.  I will need to load the auto-factory into the main cargo bay to do this.  Are we expecting trouble?]

Alex whispers a prayer.

[We’re attacking a hostile superpower at a facility where one missile stores enough nuclear warheads to kill everyone I love.  I’m being prepared.]

After the last four-man squad go up the ramp, Alex follows, smashing her fist on the door controls on the inside.  

She points to a series of dark gray cubes, each large enough to hold a pickup truck.

“When I say the word, get inside those,” she orders the marines.  

“Don’t get out until the light goes green.  Belt in, check your gear and hold on. Ten to a pod.”

One of the gunnies is a hulking Latino with a tattoo of an eagle on the back of his neck.  He jerks his head at his men.

“You heard the lady.”

Alex taps her wrist computer and the doors to the bridge slide open.

“Team leaders and radiomen on the bridge, with me.”

Vasquez is already in the second control chair, hands gripped tight around the spherical touch controls on either side.  A series of projections in front of her face toggle through the status of weapons, defense screens, engines and a dozen other things.

Alex drops into the other one and pulls up the pilot's controls.

“Preflight on your word, Straightjacket.”

“Ladies and gentlemen of the corps, welcome aboard USIS _Artemis,_ ” Alex drawls.  “Get comfy.”

“USIS?”

“United States Interstellar Ship.  Just in case the Navy gets any ideas.”

“Interstellar?” blurts one of the radiomen, a redheaded woman who looks about thirteen.  She’s tiny. All freckles and lean muscle.

“Like in Star Trek?  Damn. I knew the quartermaster was holding out on us.”

Her commanding officer snorts.

“When aren’t they?” Alex chuckles.  “This isn’t even the fancy model.”

“You’re joking.”

Vasquez laughs.

“Nope.  My fairy godmother was going to go into the cookie jar for the good stuff until Congress got cold feet.  Write your senators, kids.”

“Superwoman gave you this ship?” wheezes a dark-skinned mountain of a man right behind Vasquez.  He sounds like all the air was knocked out of him.

_How does he know her codename?_

[Echo, mark him for security re-screening.]

“Damn straight.”

Alex rolls the smooth alloy of the control sphere under her right hand and the sub-lightspeed engines warm up.

_This is too much goddamned fun.  I get paid for this._

“This is the cockpit.  Welcome aboard. Our cruising altitude for this evening’s flight will be 984,000 feet at an average speed of one tenth of a percent speed of light.  That’s 670,000 miles an hour for those of you who didn’t like math in school. Please secure all beverages in case of a failure of artificial gravity.”

Alex lifts her thumb and ship-wide intercom is muted.  She flicks her finger and radios the tower.

“Seaside control, this is _Artemis._  Engines are hot.  Requesting clear skies and a green light.”

“Our birds are on the ground and NORAD is aware, _Artemis_.  You are cleared.”

“Straightjacket, activate artificial gravity and align the buffers.  Give us a taste. Three gees.”

Vasquez flicks her thumb and everyone flinches at once, the Marines straining to get upright.

“Buffers are green, White Knight.”

Alex holds her index finger up.

“Never go into space without checking the safety systems, kids.  When I put the pedal down, those engines will put out enough juice that the acceleration would kill us in a millionth of a second.  Just some liquid on the back of the seats. That’s why we use the buffers.”

“Inertial dampeners,” mutters the redhead.  “Smart.”

[Vasquez, assess her.  Monitor her during the mission.  Might have someone.]

[Solid copy.]

“Three.  Two. One.  Mark.”

Alex rolls the control sphere forward and the _Artemis_ engines blaze, filling the hangar’s exhaust corridors with plasma and raw heat blasts from the exit vents, boiling off snow on the mountain side.

They knife through snow and clouds and almost as soon as Alex’s eyes register the white blizzard outside, the blackness of space wraps around them.

“Radar exposure in ninety seconds,” Vasquez reminds Alex.

“Copy that.  We’ll just go above them.”

Before the early-warning satellites or their computers can analyze what they are seeing, the _Artemis_ is above them, following sunset as it crosses the planet’s surface.

“Straightjacket, go check the squads and the gear.”

“Aye-aye, ma’am.”

Alex turns her chair around.

“Before I show your crew the full briefing, I’m going to give you the short version.  Commander to commander. Six days ago, an alien ship crossing over Russian orbital space was hit with a barrage of nuclear missiles.  It went down in the Ural mountains. Spetsnaz captured them and moved them to a nuclear missile base about six hundred clicks due northwest from Moscow.”

“The passenger is the leader of an alien pirate gang and she has enough people on her payroll to invade Earth a hundred times over.  Those people will come for her. The fact that she hasn't taken off or broken out means that her ship is trashed, she is injured or both.  So we’re going to go in, get her out and get out of Dodge.”

Alex sighs.

“We got a communication from her henchmen.  We have ten Earth days to bail her out and we’ve already used six planning this.  After that, their fleet is going to come around the dark side of the moon in force and skullfuck anything and anyone between them and the boss.”

“We go in and we get her.  If her ship can get airborne, we do that.  Otherwise we destroy it.  Putin does not get a flying saucer to play with.  We do this and we do it right. If we’re lucky, we get an IOU from a woman who’s been blowing up spaceships for nine thousand years.”

“Force estimate?”  one of the gunnies asks.

“On base personnel should be approximately two hundred, bunkered in.  We don’t expect vehicles or hostile aircraft. Our railguns have a special slug type designed to fracture concrete so breaching should not be a problem.”

“What about the Russians?”

Alex works her jaw back and forth.

“Plan is to bypass most of the base but if they get in our way, we fight.  We are authorized to engage base personnel as needed and my team and I will clean up the evidence.”

“According to the files we were given by the pirates, no humans on her crew or even aliens that appear human.  Person colored? Two legs, one head, two arms? Shoot it before it can shoot you. Anything else...assume it is a VIP and do not even fucking think about it.  Only myself and Ice speak their language so no sudden movements, no gun pointing. Clear?”

“Crystal.”

“Always wanted to meet an alien,” the ginger radiowoman muses.

* * *

###  **August 7, 2006 | Susan Vasquez (code name "Straightjacket")**

Central Siberia

Russian Military Installation

 

 

The pod shakes and shudders as it drops through the atmosphere. All around her, Marines are praying or shivering or eyes dead ahead, forcing the fear back by staring at the guy across from them.

Vasquez smiles.

A young man across from her has a button on his helmet that reads.

_Hearts and Minds: the best places to shoot people._

...which is the most Marine Corps thing she has seen in her life.

“Nice button!” Vasquez hollers over the mix of prayers and automated warnings and whimpering that fills the drop pod. “Got a spare?”

He reaches into his utility pockets and pulls out a small handful of stickers. Vasquez rolls up her sleeves to expose her multitool’s fabricator. After giving each a quick spray of polymer, she affixes them to her own helmet.

* * *

  ** _Hearts and Minds. The best places to shoot people._**

**_Grenades...Small Package, Big Fun!_ **

**_Keep Complaining.  I’m Reloading._ **

* * *

She finishes it off which a smiley-face on the breastplate made of tiny skull pins.

“Dress for the job you want,” Vasquez reminds him.  "I think I'm going to get these added permanently."

“You been doing this long?” the kid asks.

“Second group of recruits. Me and boss lady were the first ones to go in the field.”

The kid whistles.

“Damn. So where’d you serve before?”

“Didn’t. Straight from basic to Rangers school.”

“You’re...whoa. Shit! You’re Susan Vasquez!”

Her hand drops to her arc pistol.

“You going to share that tidbit?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Smart man.”

“Ten seconds to touchdown,” the onboard AI warns them.

Vasquez unclips her restraints and gets to her feet. The pod wobbles as it hits thicker atmosphere and she stumbles but stays upright.

“We are dropping at the east end of the base. Our job is to kill the generators, destroy the motor pool and draw attention. Murphy, Jackson, Okana and Jehtries take the portable shelters and set up on the ridge. Everyone else, fall in behind me.”

The pod hits the dirt with a jarring thump. The door drops down.

“Go! Go! Go!”

Marines spill out and the snipers head uphill, each carrying a ninety pound metal plate on their backs. It looks especially ridiculous on Jen Okana’s back...that thing must way almost as much as she does.

The woods are quiet. Pines and fir trees. The odd pile of deer shit. Scratches on the trunks from antlers and bear claws. Vasquez clenches her jaw, hoping her implant will pick up on the twitching tic in her cheek.

[Yes?]

[Hermana, toggle my mic on and get me all fireteams.]

“Getaway leader, this is Crowbar leader. We are on the ground. Eighty meters to base perimeter,” she whispers.

Up on a rocky outcropping, the snipers are clicking together the plates of their shelter and notching their railguns in the sockets. Leftover alloy from machining the ship’s hull itself, those things are stupid heavy and stupid tough.

“Snipers set up at evac point,” Vasquez reports.

“Move slow,” Alex reminds her. “Do not set off the charges until I give the say so.”

Vasquez spots a tipped-over oak and slides behind it. She makes the sign to rally up and her team joins her. She looks them over.

“Fuck’s sake, private.”

She taps her own suit’s shoulder piston and then points at him.

“...reconnect the valve.”

“Aye-aye.”

“Masks on, everyone.”

Vasquez puts the facemask on and clips the rear plate into it, forming a tinted bubble of armored glass over her head.

[Hermana, bring up the sensor suite. Nightvision or infrared. Whatever gives better resolution. Switch between as needed.]

Blue shows the cold concrete of buildings and snow and a few yellow splotches show still-cooling engine blocks and the faces of the guards on patrol.

“Arc pistols,” Vasquez whispers. “Set them to three and synced shot, on my command.”

She points at the heavy gunners.

“You get over there, double time. Suits should let you jump the fence, no problem. Disarm them, cuff them and then stash the bodies wherever you can.”

“I’ve got one,” Vasquez whispers.

“Two and three,” reports the kid with the stickers.

“Baby makes four,” says the man to her right.

“Angel team,” she whispers. “If this goes south, open up. Watch your targets and fire at will.”

Three brief flashes of a red flashlight let her know that the sniper nest heard her. The four man patrol walks in pairs between the bunkers and buildings, one man with his weapon out and one jiggling doors to make sure they’re locked. They carry recent-model rifles and what look like night vision cameras. Not the sort of gear every Russian soldier is handed.

 _Spetsnaz on base security?_ Vasquez wonders. _Guess we’re in the right place._

“Fire.”

Four lances of pure voltage sizzle across the hillside, striking each of the soldiers. They twitch and thrash and the infrared shows a stream of body-temperature liquid pooling on the cold concrete under one of the men.

“Give it a three count,” Vasquez warns them. “If they don’t drop, double tap.”

She watches each of the men closely.

“They’re down.”

The gunners vault over the log, sprint to the fence and leap over it, clearing it by several feet with the hydraulic assist. Each man grabs two Russians, one on each shoulder. They kick open the door of a small utility building and toss them inside, rolling a gas grenade in after them.

“Sleeping tight,” they report to Vasquez.

“All right, everybody. Follow me and keep your heads on a swivel.”

The five Marines tagging along do great, given that they are novices on weapons and gear. They make their way through the motor pool and machine shop, cooking truck batteries and engine computers with arc pistol shots.

“Getaway leader, we are in position at the east silo.”

“Copy that. Breach the doors in three, two, one…”

One of the _Artemis’_ drones fires a railgun round from above, smashing the concrete blast doors like a fist through a plate glass window.

“Recon drones up,” Vasquez orders her team.

Unclipping the drone from her own armor, she taps some commands into her wrist tool and lets go. The donut-shaped drone hovers on a faint plume of blue flame.

She waves at the drone. “Hi there, buddy. Good girl, , Sprinkles.  Fetch.”

“Sprinkles, really?” asks Thompson, a huge black man who is carrying a missile launcher on his back in addition to his railgun.

“Looks like a donut and she’s saved my ass a thousand times.”

“That works.”

Sprinkles black-and-gray striped housing sinks into the dust cloud. Her men follow suit, sending their drones into the crater.

[Put mine on overwatch and use one of the others as a backup. Tile the feeds, Hermana.]

[Done.]

On the upper right, soldiers are grabbing rifles off the rack to investigate the explosion.

One the upper left, a fire control crew is dowsing generators and computers.

One the lower two feeds, Vasquez sees the same scene from two angles.

A hulling K’Hund mercenary with a freshly taken K’Hund skull hanging from his belt is arguing with a tall woman with a scared face. Behind him are two of his bodyguards, each carrying a massive plasma cannon. A pair of soldiers are strapped to tables and doctors are trying to _weld_ motors and plating to their bodies. The plating is the glassy green of Rakni-Xinda composite and it looks like the motors are stripped down lifter parts.

_Fuck. They figure that out and they’ll have our hydraulics beat. Long as they have a bath of carbon for it and some seed microbes, that shit can self repair._

“This is Crowbar Actual, calling Getaway Actual.”

“This is Getaway Actual.”

“Be advised, we have K’Hund mercenaries on site, alien weapons and human experimentation. Appears to be grafting raxxie hull composite and cargo lifters to soldiers. Over.”

Nothing.

_Do not die on me, Alex. Clarice will kill me if you die._

“Do you read?”

“This is Getaway Actual,” Alex replies, sounding short of breath. “We found the wreck. Missiles had already been unloaded and one of the railguns was stripped. That explains the augmented humans using railgu-Allister! Get down!”

Vasquez winces. That was the scrawny ginger who showed such promise in the cockpit. She fangirled equally about the gear _and_ the mission.

[This is bad, Suze. Their shit is primitive but it kills just fine. I’ve already lost four on my team, three wounded and a KIA. Getaway three is wiped out. I’m sending a drone squadron to burn their gear and collect tags. Gentleman took a hit when it threw a half-track at him but he’s shaking it off. Not sure the Russians will have a shortage of volunteers.]

[Allister?]

[She’s down but not out. Railgun round to the ribs. Suit isolated it before the bone fragments could get moving but she lost a lung and part of her heart. I’m calling a medical drone in now.]

[I’m going to get closer. We can take the K’Hunds and capture the doc.]

[Do it. You see any materials lying around, put a demo charge on them...use the nukes. I’ll take responsibility with the brass.]

[Any advice, Danvers?]

[Spread rounds to knock them over and then spray them with arc pistol fire on max. Rolling a grenade under the skirt works too. This armor must be experimental...it’s not even separated into two legged pants yet. We’re going to find the VIPs, dust off and hit this place from orbit.]

[We will deep six the little shop of horrors.]

[You are not allowed to die, Straightjacket.]

[You neither, White Knight.]

Vasquez turns back to her team.

“Change of plans. We have hostile aliens on site and someone is Frankenstein-ing ship armor and construction equipment onto soldiers down there. They get those suits on, they’re artillery with feet. We’re going in before they do. We can drop the aliens and grab the doc. Targets in your HUD now.”

Without another word, they slap the spikes into the concrete, spool out some cable and start rappelling into the empty silo.

Vasquez points her railgun at the nearest blast door and loads two spread-kinetics rounds, firing them both at once. The kickback throws her into the opposite wall and sends the door sailing into the room in a cloud of hot steel. Her suit takes most of the recoil but the onboard computer was slow, it didn’t stiffen up in time.

Green lasers pierce the dust, sweeping across the teams torso’s and helmets.

“They can’t see us yet, stay frosty. Drone coming in the air vent above them in twenty seconds. When it marks a target, you shoot.”

She turns to the engineer she brought with her, looking the woman over.

_Kaitlin, was it? Must be. The uniform says Sanders, K._

Blood is drying from a rifle round Kaitlin took in her arm. It was an ordinary gun but the bullet was coated in toxic _something_ and the acid splash meant the shell made it into her arm.

“Demo charges every ten meters. The ones with the red tape. We’re burying this on our way out.”

“Music to my ears, ma’am.”

Sweeping into the room, Vasquez draws her arc pistol. She goes soldier to soldier and puts a kill-shot into each man’s face, leaving a sizzling, perfectly circular tunnel of burnt-out flesh.

“Check the room. Anything paper, bag it. Anything with a handle, trigger or a keyboard, pop one of these on it,” she instructs her people.

She tosses a stack of short-range transmat beacons onto the floor.

As she slides the door shut behind her, Vasquez taps her wrist computer and a series of flashes behind them light the hallway...and draw the attention of a patrolling cyborg.

He turns his head. The crude barrel-sized helmet is covered with various cameras. Motors and hydraulics the size of a bulldozer’s peek out from between the plates. He lifts a massive, two barrel railgun. With any luck, firing it will kill him. The barrels are not sealed and if there’s anything to absorb the recoil, she cannot see it.

_If this is the test rig, Mark I is going to be fucking unstoppable._

“Focus fire!” she screams.

Her team lift their rifles and open up. A dozen railgun rounds strike the armor in rapid succession but never fully penetrate, simply sliding the man back further with the impact and leaving red-hot lumps of slag.

Vasquez toggles her own weapon to load three kinetic rounds and pulls the trigger. All three rails fire at once and white-hot pain lights up her shoulder.

The impact blows one of the chest plates loose and sends the man--former man--up against the opposite wall.

“Fuck,” she hisses. “Pistols. Max settings. Cook the fucker.”

[Shoulder dislocated. Pain rising past safe levels. Initiating neural pulse.]

Something spreads across her wounded shoulder. It’s sudden and cold like an ice bath but after, Vasquez can stand upright and move her other arm without pain. She looks down and sure enough, one of the pistons on her suit is shattered.

“Thompson,” she calls out.

He’s busy firing into the now-dead Russian.

“Cease fire!” she hollers.

“Thompson, come pop this piston out. Fresh one is strapped to my right thigh.”

“Yes ma’am.”

He manages to unseat the wrecked piston and put in the new one in a matter of seconds. It’s like he worked with these suits his whole career. He squeezes her shoulder and she nods.

[Hermana, mark him. Another candidate.]

“All right, Thompson. Grab my arm and pull it back. You!” she snaps at the medic.

“Get ready to pop the joint back in.”

“One, two, three...go!”

 

 

Vasquez must have blacked out momentarily because when she looks around, her team is busy with plasma cutters, slicing up the body of the cyborg. The medic is hovering over her, wiping sweat off his face and scrubbing a scratch on her face with disinfectant.

“Try to keep the big pieces whole,” she croaks. “The lab rats won’t be able to do much with crumbs.”

“Already on it,” Thompson assures her.

[Hermana, distance to the lab?]

[Next door. Thirty meter hallway. It appears to be trapped. I have marked power sources and radio emissions. Should let you shoot your way through the traps.]

[Danvers?]

[Located the VIP. She appears to be wired into a trap which uses one of the missile warheads. Fifty megaton yield. Given the injuries suffered by Ktenno, she is in a state of radioisotope shock. Moving her would either trigger the trap or she would go into shock and lose control of the black hole she is maintaining on a nearby doorway. A transmat is not an option, even if Alex could get a beacon past the tripwires.]

[Fun. What else?]

[Russian troops approaching in division strength, armor and helicopter support. At least two Helgrammite skiffs are in the air. Not ours. They appear to be carrying nuclear air-to-air missiles in addition to possible weapons. Probably from the 1960s and not decommissioned as arms treaties required.]

[How long?]

[Six minutes to air contact.  Twenty one to ground contact.]

Vasquez hauls herself to her feet and nods to three of her soldiers.

“You and you. With me. Set your railguns to eighty percent. All three barrels, tenth of a second spacing on the burst. When I kick open that door, drop the aliens. I’ll zap and grab the doc.”

“You, bring up the rear. Anything else moves, smoke it. Kill the two guys on the table. Looks like we’re doing them a favor.”

“Clear?”

Vasquez pushes open the hallway, arc pistol in hand. One by one, she zaps the explosive charges and sensors used in the booby traps. By the time the hall is clear, the ceiling is collapsing in three places and the floor is littered with sharp chunks of torn steel.

“Walk soft. It’s a mess in here.”

She motions for her team to get behind her and places a breaching charge on the door. She triggers the charge and follows up with two zappers. The room is flooded with white light and looping, metallic shriek at a hundred fifty decibels.

The K’Hunds die before they can recover from the noise, sizzling lumps of brain and bone shattering the ceiling behind them. The doc must have been wearing filters because she dives under her console and comes up with what looks like a plasma pistol.

A massive one. It’s the length of a short rifle and it looks like it the whole barrel must be twenty inches in diameter. The doc’s hand is wobbling holding it up but she’s managing.

Vasquez raises her railgun.

“End of the line, doc.”

“Stay back!”

“You shoot me, they’ll annihilate you.”

The doctor’s eyes flick to Thompson and Sanders. Vasquez can see the math in the doctors head. Angles and timing and whether she can make it to this cover before that happens from this direction or that one.

“Down on your knees.”

“I expect to be treated as a prisoner of war.”

“Fine by me.”

The doctor puts the plasma pistol on the ground.

“Turn to your left,” Vasquez instructs. “Kick it over to me without looking.”

Vasquez scoops the pistol up when it bumps into her foot. It’s similar to her railgun -- three very distinct pieces -- except that these are separated by a faintly glowing rod of white metal down the middle and tied together with rows plasma-filled power conduits.

_I really hope I get to keep this._

[Hermana?]

[Combination design. Extremely powerful. Redundant singularity power cores. Antimatter projector, yield ranging from one picogram to one hundred grams. Six-emitter laser array designed to generate a black hole on a given point. Laser-primed arc beam with maximum yield of two gigawatts.]

[Wow.]

[Wow, indeed. This weapon is highly impractical for infantry use but it would be worthwhile as an anti-ship weapon.]

[Safety?]

[Highlighted.]

Vasquez cinches the zip ties tighter.

“Let me guess, you took this off the prisoner. Good thing I saved your dumb ass. You were about to fire an antimatter blast _underground twenty feet from your face._ ”

Before the doctor can make a smart remark, Vasquez jabs her in the neck with the sedative.

“Crowbar to Getaway, we have extracted the HVT and are stripping the lab.”

“Who is this?” asks a male voice.

_Fuck._

“Is this your little friend?”

The sound of a fist hitting human flesh makes Vasquez flinch.

“Danvers, Alexandra. United States Army, Lieutenant. Serial Number 252-38-1189.”

“No matter. We will find her. Attach this one to the bomb as well. Find the rest of her team and kill them.”

Vasquez mutes the channel to the Russian and her implant sets up a new one.

“Rally on my position.  We are getting what we came for, people.  No one left behind.”

[Hermana, I need options for that trap.]

[Simple.  A repair drone should be able to slice open the bomb casing, expose the trigger device and remove enough explosive plating that it cannot go critical.  It would take approximately sixty seconds. If the bomb detonated, it would scatter plutonium dust and hydrogen fuel. Radiation would be high but survivable.  Each engineer carries at least one drone.]

[What? I draw their attention and you neuter the bomb?  That easy?  Why didn’t we do it half an hour ago?]

[Operative Danvers did not order either Echo or me to do so.  She was busy.]

[Do it.  Tell the engineers to drop their drones at the next air vent they pass.]

 

* * *

###  **August 7, 2006 | Kara Danvers**

National City, California

Harbor and Third Streets, Starsea Lofts

Kara’s Apartment

 

Winn places the tea in Kara’s hand with a kiss on her forehead.

“Thanks, buddy.”

“I would get jealous,” Lena warns him from the couch.  “But you’re farther up the Kinsey scale than I am. Somehow.”

Lena’s ink-black locks are pulled into a loose ponytail and she’s snuggled into one of Kara’s old National City University sweatshirts.  A computer tablet with an “L” badge on the back is balanced on her knees. The smallest dragon--Abigail--has finally been dissuaded from nesting in Lena’s hair.  So she’s guarding the hair instead, curled up by Lena’s ear with her neck stretched over the ponytail. Abby’s emerald scales shine in the afternoon sun and she lifts her head and tracks every tiny noise.

Clare and Kenny are snoozing at the foot of the couch, necks entwined.  They’re already the size of beagles and have been ripping through Kara’s supply of smoked beef.

A ludicrously broad supply of menstrual products are strewed on the kitchen counter.  

Neither Kara nor Lena were surprised Winn made the drugstore run.

They were _shocked_ at how expertly he handled it.

“How’d you find her, Winn?”

“Find who?” he asks, leaning back in the rocking chair.

“Your _niece,_ dummy.”

“I had one great-uncle who would still speak to me.”

“Huh.”

Lena chuckles.

“So at this point, two gay men in a one-bedroom are hosting a eleven-year-old girl?”

Winn groans.

“Yeah.  I swear, it would be easy for straight guys.  Grooming takes time and there’s only one bathroom.”

“Some straight men take care of their appearance,” Kara thinks aloud.

Winn snorts.

“James Olsen is an extreme outlier, buddy.”  

“Why does she want to stay with you, Winn?”

“What, am I that awful?” he jokes.

“No, I mean what  is she running from?  Back at home.”

“Mom’s new boyfriend found Jesus.”

“Flipped out over a haircut.  If she doesn’t have long hair, how will she get a husband?” he laments, putting hand on his forehead like a diva about to faint.

Lena pulls a face at the mention of ‘haircut’ in the context of parental scorn.

“She’s a kid,” Kara reminds him.

Winn shrugs.

“He found nasty Jesus, not nice Jesus.  Apparently their little church believes in training wives early.”

Kara drums her nails on the countertop.

“Winn, make sure she has the song.  If her new daddy ever tries to drag her somewhere…”

Winn smiles.

“He’ll taste the rainbow?  The be-glittered Fist of Justice?”

Kara snorts.

“The same way an bug tastes a windshield.”

“Conference call is starting,” Lena warns them.

She straightens her posture and puts her glasses back on.  Moments later she is exchanging greetings in Japanese.

“Don't you think it’s hot how smart your girl is?” Winn whispers.

“Don’t remind me.  When she started speaking Ajatkar at breakfast, I got so wet I worried I would end up dehydrated.”

Winn hangs his head.

“Here lies Superwoman...immune to bullets, explosions and Kryptonite.  Killed by gayness.”

Kara laughs, too high and too loud for Lena’s liking.

“Let’s go in the other room, Winn.  Check the ol’ scanner.”

“Hell, no.  I’m not subjecting wife beaters and bank robbers to Superwoman’s time of the month.”

“Careful, Winn…”

“I mean it in the best way.  Fun fact,” he chortles.  “Part of the hormone changes mean that your testosterone is higher right now...or a human woman’s would be.  So that whole ‘being cranky’ stereotype is really just because you’re running on more masculine stuff.  So assholes are judging you because for a week or so, your hormones match ours...and they think only males get to be assertive.”

“Huh,” Kara muses.  “You really _did_ your homework when Hannah had hers, didn’t you?”

“With a lot of favors from friends, yeah.  She was freaking out...bad.  Needed to talk about it.  Wanted to hear she was normal, asked if there was any upshot to it.  Plus she’s nerdy so she wanted the science. Why do you think Lena called me to be errand boy?” he jokes.

“Shit,” Kara mutters.  “She knew. Tricky little minx.”

They sit together on the side of the bed, shoulder to shoulder just like in the dorms.  Winn has the police and fire department scanners up, translated on-the-fly to text by Kleenex’s systems.  Kara pulls up ABLE’s database and flicks through the new entries.

One of them catches her eye.

“Huh.”

“Huh, what?”

“Huh, a suspiciously rectangular hill in Somalia that wasn’t there day before yesterday.”

She turns the screen with the satellite photos around.

“That’s both very square and very new,” Winn agrees.

“Blue Beetle, superimpose known ship types on that hill.  Assume it is being used to conceal a landing or a wreck.”

A series of ship outlines flash over the screen until the simulation lands on one.

“It’s in...alien?” Winn suggests.  “They seem to be symbols of some kind.”

“Sorry.  Haven’t translated all the specs.  That’s Helgrammite script. It’s a Makta-Hiron Type Twelve Freighter,” Kara reads.  “Fairly common ship. Massive. Helgie ships move over half the tonnage of the galaxy.”

Kara squints at the screen as if that will reveal something new.

“Don’t like it.  That area is run by warlords.  If they wanted the cargo, they would’ve already stripped it.”

“Kolex, estimate maximum passenger complement of a MH-12 assuming settlers with minimal supplies and no terraforming gear.”

“Eighteen thousand.”

Winn whistles.

“Which is a lot of prisoners to feed,” Kara muses.  “Won’t be long before something awful happens. I better suit up.”

“You sure?” Winn asks.  “What about the, uh, outflow?”

She turns on him, eyes flickering red.

“There are prisoners, Winn!”

He steps back.

“I’m not planning on bleeding to death out there but I have eighteen thousand reasons to risk it.  Let Lena know when she’s off the call, yeah? And tag the other ABLE people so they are looped in. I might be needing to place a lot of refugees.”

“On it.”

[Blue Beetle, I’m going to the roof.  Transmat Scion and Flamebird after I jump off.]

[Living dangerously, I see.]

His vocal projections sounded like they just left the set of _Downton Abbey._

[Kolex, what the fuck is wrong with your voice patterns?]

[One of my other processes was playing draughts online with Mr. Pennyworth.]

[Draughts?]

Kara snorts.

[Americans call it ‘checkers’.]

[Yeah, well tell Alfred I said hi and remember that I’m not Batman.]

[Very good, miss.]

[I will smear marmalade on your processors if you don’t stop it.]

[Understood.]

Kara hits the stairs and sprints the remaining six flights to the roof.  Stretching side to side, she rubs her hands together.

“Here goes.”

Sprinting off the edge, she leaps, allowing herself a moment of freefall.  Scion’s jumpsuit appears around her as several wide strips of alloy weave, impact gel and nano-tubes. The edges self-weld and the whole thing cinches tight around her skin.  The hard plates transmat directly into place.

Before she’s fallen past third floor windows, Kara is ready.

[Suit up time?]

[Just under 495 nanoseconds.  A new record.]

[Blue Beetle, put on my ‘angry’ playlist.]

Kara aims straight up and blasts into the stratosphere while Metallica blazes in her eardrums.

 

 

[This is bad, Blue Beetle.  Even from orbit, this looks sketchy.  Why does he have so many vehicles parked _just_ over that ridge?  Why does he have construction equipment under guard five miles south?  Why did he shoot down the Air Force drone?]

[Likely because he intends to crack the hull with the construction machines and then attack from both sides, driving the survivors into the vehicles.  And he does not want the US government to interfere.]

_Fuck you, Mr. Al-Tabani._

Kara’s anger awakens the Destroyer grafts without her even realizing it. Everything slows and sharpens.  She can feel the sizzle of solar wind. She can make out six tiny specks of bent aluminum in the far distance.  Remnants of some booster rocket or satellite. One of them is slowly tearing in half.

_Is my vision that good?_

[Turn off optical magnifiers.]

Kara looks again, without the aid of a telescope.

The hill is easy.  It’s nearly five kilometers long.  The jeeps and pickup trucks...those would be hard to spot without a telescope.  One of the trucks has a red and yellow-patterned bedroll folded up in the bed.

“Whoa,” she whispers into her helmet.  “This is amazing.”

[Blue Beetle, we need to flush these guys out.  Drop a comm uplink in the riverbed and ping it. See if the ships communications gear works.  Dispatch a squad of interceptor drones to me and retask the _Memory_ from polar orbit to fire support.]

[Done.]

Kara looks up.  The hull of the _Memory_ catches the sunlight, beetle blue and shiny as a mirror.  The flagship of the home fleet moves from high orbit to a lower one and angles her bulbous nose downward.  Dozens of turrets and launch tubes power up, ready to fire on anything in the area of the crashed ship. Her main guns stay sealed.  A barrage of black holes would be overkill for this mission.

_What a sight._

[An impressive achievement, Lady Kara.]

[One ship isn’t going to fight off the Daxamites, Blue Beetle.]

[Not alone.  But _that_ ship is quite the deterrent.]

[Uplink in place.  Testing.]

_“Khav syt hon?”_

_ <”This is heard?” | Galactic Standard. Typical shorthand for starship communications.> _

_“Hon.”_

_ <”Heard.”  | Galactic Standard.> _

[Kolex, transmit a packet identifying myself and reminding them of Earth’s colony and protectorate designations.]

[Done.  We have a new incoming communication.]

“Is anyone there?” asks what sounds like a little girl’s voice.

In English.  These people were trying to come prepared.

“This is Kara Zor-El.”

“You’re outside the ship?” the girl demands.  “Hide!”

“No, I’m above the ship.  In orbit.”

“Oh.  So you’re in a ship.”

“...sure.  And I’m here to get you and everyone else inside that ship to safety.  What’s your name?”

“Lona.”

“Hi, Lona.  Can I speak to the person in charge, please?”

“This is Phyret.  I speak for the refugees here.”

“Refugees?  Do you have injured?”

“Not anymore.  We were a week out of Starhaven when slavers attacked.  Knocked out three engines. With them on our tail, we couldn’t make the landing sites the buoy indicated.  So we came down here.”

“While we were unloading, locals opened fire.  Dozens were killed or injured before we got everyone else inside the hull and fired up the thrusters to bury the ship.  The injured were mostly Maeshar and Pahikaan. Dry air and high oxygen levels didn’t help their wounds. Didn’t make it.”

“Black give them rest,” Kara whispers.

“...and guide their souls.” Phyret calls back.

Kara chews the inside of her lip.

“Is the ship spaceworthy?”

“It could be.  But that will take people on the outside cutting some lines and patching some plates.  Not going to happen with those savages at our door.”

“I don’t have any ship that can carry you all at once.  I’m going to draw the army around the ship out and then hit them.  I can send some fighters to give you cover and I’m dispatching construction drones to help with repairs.”

“I’ll have a list ready.”

“Get everyone inside the ship and have them brace for impact.”

[Have the interceptors start a strafing run.  Memory will fire point-defense railguns on my mark and at the positions closer to the refugees.   Drive them away. Put it all up on my visor and stand by.]

[Understood, Lady Kara.]

Kara watches as the featureless oval hulls of the interceptors buzz the row of trucks and armored vehicles, spraying them with arc beams.  Terrorists and mercenaries leap from their vehicles and take shelter in the rocks. The bold ones train rockets and missiles on the interceptors, only to watch the warheads sizzle away on the shields.

[Mark.]

Dozens of small turrets on the _Memory_ tilt downward and spit railgun rounds at the desert below.  Hundreds of rounds a minute strike the sand between the ship and the terrorists trying to capture it--each with the force of a battleship’s shell--kicking up a wall of red-hot sand.

“That’s right, that’s right…” Kara mumbles.  “Back to base with you…”

Her visor outlines different groups of vehicles and men fleeing and finally _disappearing_ in a handful of places in the nearby hills.

_Caves._

[Suppressing fire on those caves.  Arc beams only.]

Kara draws Flamebird and grips it tight, tapping hidden controls on the pommel.  

_Down we go._

The overlapping barrier fields in the blade sizzle and seethe against each other.  She dials back the warp coils inside the blade, the ones that counteract gravity. Thousands of tons are exposed to Earth’s pull all at once.  The blade drops and Kara follows, diving for a patch of exposed rock.

Re-entry heat breaks across Scion’s barriers and the tip of Flamebird sets off a series of sonic booms as it enters the lower atmosphere.  A few of the soldiers look up. Even through the cloud of hot air around herself, Kara can see their shapes.

She pulls back hard to slow their descent and then lets go and Flamebird strikes the rock at two thousand miles an hour.  Five million tons of neutron star matter and alloy hit the African plate like a slow-motion asteroid.

Not a single man in the valley is still on his feet.

Kara rises slowly through the dust cloud, hands wrapped in white heat.  Her helmet retracts to show her crimson-tinted gaze. She stretches a finger and plasma snakes out, searing a line in the rock.

 _“_ _Rakae!_ Kara bellows.

_ <”Kneel” | Arabic.> _

Within ten seconds, all but a few dozen men are on their knees, crying and pleading for mercy.  Looking around, Kara sees a knot of men still standing, with weapons trained on her.

_Must be a big shot._

She saunters towards them, tapping a tune on her armor’s thigh pads.  Rifle shells and grenades and rockets slam into Scion’s barriers. When she gets within speaking distance, a man charges her with some kind of remote in his hand.

The explosive vest is ripped from his chest and flung into the air where rises a hundred feet before the detonator can go off.  The would-be martyr is lying in the dirt, weeping clutching his fractured left arm. The strap must have snagged as she removed the vest.  A tiny sliver of bone can be seen where it tore through the skin.

Kara takes a canister of biogel from a panel in the armor and sprays it on the wound.  It hardens quickly, holding bone and muscle and blood in place.

“Saeidah!” she calls into the crowd.

_ <”Help him” | Arabic.> _

Eventually two young men--boys, really--with the same slope of the nose and knob of the chin emerge from the sea of trembling bodies.

_Strong family resemblance._

“We take him to doctor,” one of them tells Kara.

“Good.  Tell them.  Acid,” she replies, pointing at the biogel.  “Acid will dissolve that.”

They nod, hauling the injured man towards the nearest still-working vehicle.

A gunshot rings out and Kara turns to find the source.  Dust twirls slowly in the air and flames sit still as stone on wrecked vehicles.  Large-caliber bullets from a pistol, held by the man the others were protecting...aimed at the heads of the men rescuing their loved one.

Kara plucks them out of the air, one at a time before blurring over to the man who fired him.  She slams him with her shoulder, knocking his bodyguards aside and cracking two of his ribs. She puts a booted foot on his gun hand and lets the bullets fall, one at a time, onto his forehead where each leaves a tiny burn mark.

“I win.”

 

* * *

 

###  **August 7, 2006  | Shay Mitchell (General Shay Mitchell, United States Space Force, code name "Blacksmith")**

United States Space Force Headquarters (formerly DEO headquarters), code name "The Anvil"

Bradshaw Mountains, Arizona, United States

War Room

 

“Sitrep,” she demands.

“No word from White Knight.  Last images from the sat showed armor, helos and two alien ships on approach.  We estimated they would engage the team in ten minutes.”

_Come on, Danvers.  I did not spend hours long talking you up to the Secretary of Defense for you to die on me._

“How long ago was that?”

“Eleven minutes ago.”

“Next satellite overflight?”

“Thirty minutes.”

“Get me Blue Angel.”

The specialist looks up from her console.

“She’s not responding ma’am.  Her computer is.”

“Ask it for drones, satellites, anything to get us eyes over that area.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She sucks in a breath.  Everyone is staring at her--two dozen good soldiers--like they think she can fix it.  Some of the officers look away when they realize they are doing it.  Her rank does not mean she can fix it...it just lets her take the blame if it all fails.

“Ma’am!” one of the techs calls out.

“I have something.”

“Put it up.”

The displays show the missile base and a horde of Russian troops advancing slowly through the trees while a pack of battle tanks approaches on the main road.

_Nothing’s happening...why?_

“Get me Danvers or Vasquez.  Direct.”

“Aye-aye.”

“Anvil to Snowstorm, please reply.”

“Anvil, we read you.  This is Snowstorm Actual.  We have secured the VIP plus two along with intel and a high-value hostage.  We have multiple friendlies KIA and wounded. Path to the exfil is cut off. Request permission to engage hostiles and clear the area.”

_Requesting to start a war, you mean._

“Stand by.”

Mitchell pulls out her satphone.

“Go for JSOC.  State your business.”

_Screw it.  Danvers is worth a court martial._

“JSOC, this is Anvil Actual.  The team for Operation Houdini is pinned down and taking fire.  Enemy armor is six minutes out and hey are requesting permission to engage.  We have friendlies wounded and KIA. I am moving White Knight to White King and we are engaging.”

“Anvil Actual, this is JSOC.  Stand down. You were not authorized to engage.”

“JSOC, we have heavily armed VIPs, my assets and US Marines dug in with a superior position and access to anti-armor, air support and WMDs.  The enemy won’t know what hit them. I just have to drop the leash.”

Mitchell can hear the general at the other end breathing while he thinks.

“Solid copy, Anvil Actual.  Authorize moving White Knight to White King.   Authenticate with Tango-Two-Zulu-Niner-Quebec. SecDef wants briefing at mission-plus-ten minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Mitchell?  Give ‘em hell.”

“Get me Snowstorm team.”

“Go for White Knight.”

“White Knight, I’m moving you to White King.  The mission is yours.  Engage the enemy. Whatever it takes...get our people home.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Sinking back into her chair, Mitchell sighs.

“Keep monitoring their encrypted audio.”

The feed briefly goes to static when the _Artemis_ swoops over the battlefield, dropping hundreds of flares across the enemy ranks before coming around.  The railguns on the ship line up on the tank column and fires. The round cuts through three tanks and flips another over, leaving a red-hot crater when it finally comes to a stop.  

The jury-rigged Helgrammite skiffs hover over the treeline, readying for a barrage.  Whoever is flying them is guessing...they turn clumsily and seem to have trouble keeping the bow level.

A hail of plasma bolts rakes along one skiff, then the other.  Two of the _Artemis_ interceptor drones can be seen at the edges of the feed, circling the skiffs and dropping round after round from their railguns.  

As the engines fail, the wrecks drop into the trees, torn plasma lines boiling the snow cover and setting the forest alight.  A swarm of dozens of arrow-shaped craft deploy from _Artemis’_ aft hull and hover around the silo’s blast doors, spitting plasma and steel into the treeline.

Icons indicating Snowstorm’s vital sign transponders pop up on screen, moving towards the safety of the _Artemis._

Mitchell catches herself whispering the prayer out loud and looks around.  Everyone else is doing the same thing.

“Anvil Control, this is White Knight.  We are in the air and on the move.”

A cheer rises up through the control room.  Mitchell grabs her sat phone.

“JSOC.  Contact Blue Angel.  Tell her we have the VIP.  Safe and sound.”

 

 

* * *

##  **BONUS SCENE**  

* * *

###  **August 8, 2006 | Alex Danvers (code name "White Knight")**

United States Space Force Headquarters (formerly DEO headquarters) 

Bradshaw Mountains, Arizona, United States 

Hangar Bay 

 

 

Alex survived.  The mission was a success...alien revenge killing of the human race averted.

Now she just has to clean up the mess.

“Get Allister to surgery!” she bellows.  “Make sure to get the computer on before the doc opens her up.”

_Last thing I need is Svenson trying some stone age meatball surgery when Sanctuary’s medical databse has a better option._

“Stow that weapon in the lab!” Alex barks, pointing at the terrifyingly overpowered weapon Vasquez found on the surgeon.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Wasn’t there more than one of those?” one of the Marines mutters.

_No.  Certainly not...why would I skim a badass gun for myself?_

[Echo?]

[The rest of the weapons are sealed and smuggled, boss.  Ktenno has been compensated with Blue Angel’s slush fund.]

“Above my pay grade.”

Alex peels off her helmet and takes a deep breath.

_Air.  Good old fashioned, ordinary, non-compressed air._

Mitchell is waiting on the end of the ramp with a pair of officers.  Alex salutes. Mitchell returns it.

Lyra Ktenno descends the ramp behind Alex, one hand on her monstrous three-barrel pistol and one on some gizmo on her belt.  Behind her are two beings that are little more than _gaps_ in Alex’s perception of the world.  What snippets she has of them came from the flight while she worked on an injured and delirious Ktenno.

Hands that seemed to be made of hard crystal reached out and grasped Ktenno’s hand when she screamed in pain.  When they hit some particularly nasty turbulence, one of them got startled and _fell through_ a bulkhead somehow, without damaging either themselves or the bulkhead.  Their atoms simply stopped interacting.

 _Her lovers,_ Alex supposes.   _Perk of being a pirate.  Your mistresses can be from a previously-unknown species that defies our understanding of anatomy and basic physics._

“Need a hand?” Alex asks Ktenno.

The wolfish grin and cocked hip she gets in reply make Alex wonder if this thessie could really be a millennia-old badass with warrants for her arrest in hundreds of star systems.  So far most of what Alex has seen was flirting.

“Thought I wasn’t your type, soldier.”

“You are...generally speaking.”

“Oh?  A bit of a thessie at heart, are you?”

“It’s not approved of in the military.”

“Say no more.”

Ktenno offers her elbow like this was prom, not the middle of military hanger.

“Mya likes you,” Ktenno whispers.  “She writes to me.”

“Oh?”

“Hmm.  I know she misses her mother--as do I--but the pirate’s life is not the place to raise her.  Mya’s gifts are many but they are not mine. Life holds something else for her,” Ktenno sighs.

“Danvers, are you familiar with the concept of a _tsamesal?”_

“Blood by word,” Alex replies.

“The concept,” Ktenno chortles. “Not the translation.”

“Yes.  It’s a tradition where people swear oaths and claim each other as family.  In Thessalian law, it is considered a blood kinship.”

“A bit dry, but yes.  My daughter wants you to be her _layin-tsamesal_ …her mother by word.  Well, you and whoever it is we’re _not talking about_ that shares your bed _._ ”

Alex’s feet stop working and she stands there blinking.

_Mya sees me as a mother figure?  I had been inviting her to hang out in my bunk while she studied.  And made sure the mess had white sand in her rations. And found her online tutors._

“Huh,” Alex finally mumbles.

“She tells me you’ve already been taking care of her schooling, making sure she has clothing, making sure she is safe here...mother’s work.”

“It’s an honor.  But I can’t agree without speaking to my partner.”

“Naturally.  Shall we go speak to the important people in important clothing?” Ktenno teases.

Mitchell holds a hand out for Alex to shake and then offers one to Ktenno.

“Ms Ktenno.  Welcome to Earth.  Our apologies for your...initial reception.”

“At least this way I found out about the _fun_ side of the planet,” Ktennno snarks.  “And the safe one too. My daughter is…”

“Room 15,” Alex replies.  She slips her keycard out of the pouch she keeps it in and holds it out.

Ktenno snatches it without looking.

Mitchell motions to Alex and steps back to stand between the other two officers.  Alex sees four stars on one man’s shoulder and the medals of the ‘towers of power’ pinned to the other man’s chest along with a half dozen medals for service in combat theatres.

“Operative Danvers, you are promoted to the rank of Captain.  You will design, train and execute our combat operations for the United States Space Operations Command.  Operative Reynolds will reinstated and promoted to the rank of Captain. He will set agency policy, budget and oversee civilian operations.”

He holds out his hand for Alex to shake.

“Thank you, sir.”

Mitchell is trying very hard to hide three little tears.

“My office, Danvers.  One hour.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Alex knows that tone of voice, that unsteady sound.  It’s the same tone Eliza used at Alex’s med school graduation.

_Kara’s going to love this story._

 


	23. OVER THE WIRE:  Breaking News from CatCo Worldwide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "OVER THE WIRE" is a series of sound bites from news broadcasts or political speeches, covering other events around the world over a period of time.
> 
> This installment covers the early morning hours of August 10, 2006 and the scenes happen at the same time.

 

 

 

> **The man on the TV smiles and the woman with the poofed up white hair beside him raises her hands.**
> 
> **"Praise," she calls.**
> 
> **"Praise!" the audience replies.**
> 
> **"Friends, it's really simple. These creatures, the ones that are asking to come out of the closet, for all these special rights...they're not like us."**
> 
> **He thumps his hand on the lavish, gold-leafed cover of the Bible in front of him.**
> 
> **"Genesis. Male and Female he created them!"**
> 
> **Murmurs of agreement spread through the audience.**
> 
> **"These ones...these...squids. They say they don't have any males. Female he created them?" the reverend scoffs. "Harlots. The lot of them. The Bible says the wife submits to her husband. So who do they submit to?"**
> 
> **He leans closer to the camera.**
> 
> **"No one. No God to answer to. No right and wrong. No marriages. Sodomy. Fornication. Pride. They're devils. Pure and simple."**

A knock on the door startles them both.

"Get it, willya?" her husband groans.

"Yes, dear."

It's an excuse to be farther away from Frank and his beer and the minister on the TV. She's not sure if it's the drinking or the sermons on TV but the slivers of the Frank she married--the good man who helped strangers sleeping on the streets--are slipping away, more and more with each passing day.

She peers through the peephole and sees and armed man with a bulletproof vest that says "ICE" on it.

"Open up."

"Do you have a warrant?" she calls back.

Something grinds in the doorknob and the door is kicked open, knocking her to the floor.

"You can't just come in here!" she shouts.

"Matter of national security," he grumbles, not even reaching to help her up. He looks over his shoulder at a small army who came with him.

"You two...windows. You and you, watch the fire escape. Everyone else, with me. Guns up. Don't take any chances."

Edith folds her arms and stares at the man with the gun. Forty-five years of teaching twelve year olds means she knows her brats. This man is a brat, badge or no badge.

She grabs some candy from the dish by the door and pops one in her mouth.

"Mint?" she offers.  "I want to see your badge before you go. I'll be writing my congressman."

The agent stiffens.

"Of course."

He takes the mint she gave him. It's the one at the bottom of the bowl. The one that was held down by masking tape. The one the nice young couple across the hall gave her and she said to offer that candy to anyone who ever scared her.

Frank doesn't like those girls because Reverend Robertson says not to like women like them...to not listen to the excuses about "roommates". If Pat Robertson said it was God's will that her Frank jump off a bridge, she'd be a widow by morning.

She leans against the cable with the candy, making a show of getting her feet under her.

Their doorbell has a second button on it. One that the younger woman -- the white one -- installed. All the while chattering with Edith about her grandpa's home in Ireland and complaining about the quality of the wiring in the walls without _swearing._

One click for 'rescue'. Two clicks for 'trap'. Three clicks for 'be on guard.'

Click. Click. Click.

Gumdrop starts barking and the agent nearest him jumps out of his skin. He starts to draw his gun before realizing he was ambushed by a chihuahua.

"I'll get her into her kennel, officers. Put the blanket over it. You won't be able to hear her."

 

* * *

 

Obama rubs his temples. The drafts of the speech are all starting to blur together. Ordinarily he would just go with the best draft and give that speech but he has learned to trust his staffers approach on this.

Nia Nal's ability to write speeches is uncanny.

It's like she's a superhero...or a witch...because by the time he's read a third speech she writes for him on a topic, he has the public eating out of his hand. She could probably help him get majority approval ratings on an alien invasion...by the third speech at least.

It would be creepy, if it were not so useful.

"Mister President?" she asks, looking up at him from her desk messy with printouts.

She has a spotlight smile and huge brown eyes which give her heart shaped face a sort of intensity despite her sunny nature and innocent smiles. Cuter than any cartoon rabbit or baby deer Walt Disney ever drew.

"I'm fine, Miss Nal."

She tut-tuts. _What is she, my grandmother?_

"You're about to pass out, sir. And call me Nia," she jokes. "I'm beat too. Read this one, please. Then we can call it a night. Sleep on it. I think we're close."

Obama clears this throat.

"Hello, my fellow Americans. Many of you have written to your congressmen and your senators, requesting new laws dealing with aliens living among us. I'm here today to tell you that the laws simply aren't ready yet. They're not ready because this is a situation unlike any American government has ever dealt with. Or ever will deal with. Every law we have has to be looked at for purposes of human health and safety and fairness. Food safety inspectors are checking fruit and vegetables to make sure that an alien's allergy reaction won't endanger everyone around them. Air traffic controllers are trying to figure out how to land flying saucers rather than having them crash wherever they fell like it. Sheriffs and police officers are learning how to make legal, safe arrests of suspects more dangerous than anything they've ever faced."

"So I ask for your patience."

"A hundred years ago, two men who built bicycles invented the airplane. Not long after, there were airlines and all of a sudden, someone needed to be making rules about where you could fly your plane. About the same time, there was this thing called radio and one guy in Oklahoma decided to broadcast gospel music so loud that no other radio stations could be heard. Someone had to come up with rules. All that while whole states worth of farmland were blowing away. Dust in the wind. So the federal government created agencies and rules to make sure these amazing new technologies could be used safely."

"Americans came together. Even though they were hungry, scared, confused by all these changes. They wanted help and they wanted it right away but they had the courage and the grace to know that the wrong help--the wrong solution--made things worse, not better."

"That's what I'm asking you for. Patience. We are launching a new website: **www.earthstatus.us.gov** which will give up to the minute information on the progress we make on issues related to aliens as they live and work among us."

"Good night and god bless."

Nia claps as eagerly as a mother at a third-grade play.

"Very good. I've got a good feeling about that one. Let you know in the morning, all right?"

"Sure. You get home safe."

She snaps her satchel shut and smooths her blouse.

"And Miss Nal? I'm not an idiot."

"Beg pardon, Mister President?"

"No speechwriter I ever worked with wants to 'sleep on it' but you do. And you write up three speeches, have me read them all to you and tell me you'll let me know in the morning. And you do and it works _perfectly_ but half the time it's the speech I would have been sure would bomb. But it doesn't."

Her whole body is stiff and those fairy-tale-creature brown eyes are wide and terrified and jerking around the room.

 _I did that,_ he realizes. _I don't want to scare her._

"I am so, so sorry. I know I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be in this building...oh my god. I used a fake Social Security card. The Social Security department is going to arrest me! And I paid taxes but I'm sure that won't count if it wasn't under a rea-"

She seemed dead serious about the Social Security people having tactical teams.

He laughs.

"Nia...calm down."

"I won't report you.  Hell...if someone finds out, I'll pardon you.  It's fine. I figure that it's something like this: you can see the future. Nothing else makes sense. One time your speech was _perfect_ for the day after a school shooting but no one knew it was coming. I'm assuming you didn't know how to stop it because I trust tha-"

_She would have saved those kids._

"If my visions told me that much, Mister President, I would do nothing else but my time but warn schoolteachers. Usually it's...feelings...the mood and the general appearance of the place I'm in.  Not a lot of hard specifics."

He pats her shoulder.

"'Course you would. You're a good person. So you have me read all three speeches and then you...look forward? Tell me which one went over the best."

She shivers.

"That's it. I...it's while I'm asleep. When I dream…I am in the future as sort of...just my thoughts?  Hard to explain.  I visualize myself going out for a walk and project my mind away from my body. I get a mood of the people around me. I actually always visit the same two bars in my dreams...because they always have the news on. One in Oklahoma City and one in Brooklyn."

"Amazing."

Nia shrugs.

"Some members..." she pauses.  "Some _female_ members of my species have this gift. But not all of them. I got lucky. I have it and my mom has it."

She chuckles.

"It runs in the family. When there's more than one sister…it can get mean when one gets it and one doesn't."

He leans back.

_She told me she was trans...but only females get it. And it runs in the family. Is it not genetic?_

Obama sighs.

_I could sit down with every alien I meet and ask them every question I could think of until I got old. And I would know next to nothing._

"I can't imagine. If Malia or Sasha got magical powers but only one of them? I'd need a branch of government just to keep them from beating each other up."

Obama swigs the last of his tea. The stewards switch to decaf in the evening, thank God.

"You do realize this is a benefit no other president has ever enjoyed?" he asks. "Your gifts have let me navigate this crisis. I owe you for that. Big time."

"I do know, but thank you for thanking me. It's...it's what I can do for my alien brothers and sisters," she sighs. "I can't throw a bus at a bad guy or catch an airplane. But I can watch for potholes in the road and make sure that the people trying to help us make their case in the best way possible. So thank you for being on our side, sir."

"Secret's safe with me, young lady. Nia? I'd like for some US Marshals to get you home safely, if you don't mind? It's getting bad lately."

She nods.

* * *

 

Kara stares at the vintage alarm clock she and Lena rebuilt together in lieu of movie night week before last. The marks for two, three and eight o'clock are all pulsing with bright red light...the pattern either one or two blinks before the pause.

_The neighborhood watch thing took off!  Neat.  Guess more of the neighbors like me than I thought._

"Lena…" Kara hisses. "Wake up."

"Mmm."

Her hair is stuck to her sleep-sweaty forehead and her skin is pinked up from the heat of Kara's skin. The word _cuddling_ is not sufficient for Lena Luthor, it's not intense enough. She needs touch like she needs air--not that Kara minds--and Lena seems better for it.

 _Lena probably didn't get many hugs being raised by the number one bitch,_ Kara supposes.

Since her heartbeat is still that of someone in deep sleep, Kara places a kiss on Lena's forehead.

"How do you get so much more beautiful when you just...are?" she whispers.  "When it all goes away and you don't have to  be strong or be perfect?" 

The room is chilly and Lena is wrapped up around Kara and the sheet binds them together like a straightjacket. Lena prefers one sheet on the bed and getting as much of her skin against Kara's as possible.

Abigail hisses from Lena's nightstand, turning tail towards Kara and putting her wings across Lena's neck protectively.

"Yeah, yeah."

"You and the others need to hide," she tells the dragon. "Go! Be safe."

Abby hisses angrily.

"They could hurt you. Go! Go!"

With a flash of light and a 'pop' of air rushing in to suddenly-empty space, Abby is gone.

"S'bright…" Lena complains.

"I'm really sorry, sweetie. But you need to be up."

"Why?"

Lena fumbles for her glasses. Her fat-rimmed reading glasses that must be the reason people have hot-librarian kinks.

"It's almost one in the morning, Kar-"

"Shh."

Kara focuses on the sounds from the hallway.

Boots, scraping on wood. Something that hisses--a machine--being primed. Someone whispering the words 'when I say, on three'. The click and whine of springs. Kara sniffs.

The acrid whiff of cordite.

_It's a police raid._

"Someone's at the door. Problem. Stay here, Lee."

[Kolex, seal the room. Get all of Lena's body-guards in here. Now.]

[Transmat incoming.]

Kara gets up and throws on her bathrobe.

Clare and Kerry are sleeping on the living room floor. They are mastiff sized now and trying to pull a bent scale loose from their coats is like trying to remove a link from steel chain.

Far too stubborn to listen like the pygmy _galata_ do. Chances are that even a telling-to by Lena would not make them leave the apartment.

"Girls," Kara hisses. "Up, up, up."

They rouse with irritated whines and Kerry hisses, creating a few momentary flickers...like the last bit of a sparkler on Fourth of July.

Kara tiptoes over to the door and unlatches it. She waits for the whispers.

'One'

'Two'

'Three'

Kara throws the door open and widens her stance to block the doorway.

The butt of a hydraulic battering ram hits her crossed wrists. The apparatus ricochets back and two of the pistons bend like nails hit with a sledgehammer.  Their guns are pointed right at her face.

"Immigration! Get on your knees!"

Kara raises an eyebrow.

"Dude...chill. I've lived here like five months now. Not exactly a secret that I don't have papers. Some cops you are."

_Every moment they're here, they're not rounding up someone else._

"Also...guns? Really?"

"Kara?" Lena calls out. "What's going on?"

"Who's that?" one of the agents demands.

Kara yawns.

"Look, cowboy. I get that you get your hard-ons from rounding up brown people but if you think that you're getting past me and getting to her, you are wrong. _Dead wrong._ "

The agent pulls a taser and jabs it into her ribs.

_New model. It really hurts._

"Yeah," Kara teases. "That's right...big scary black lady took one of your your white women."

"Turns out she prefers my tongue to your dic-"

Before his commander can reel him in, the agent she's taunting raises his gun and empties it into Kara's face and neck. She brushes the slugs off her skin and tightens her ruined bathrobe. Letting her anger seethe through her flesh, Kara channels heat into her left hand. She puts a finger in his gun's barrel and wiggles it around.

The steel melts so quickly that it spatters his pants and boots.

"Good to see that ICE is still keeping America safe from brown people being sarcastic. Well, guys, it's been fun. Warrant?"

The lead agent shakes his head.

"We can talk in the morning then. With my lawyer."

"Kolex? Business card?"

A hand made of gleaming blue metal appears from thin air and holds out a small stack of jet black business cards and flings them at the agents, retreating from view with a single finger upraised.

Clare and Kerry slink forward in the shadows, hissing and snarling.

"Girls…"

Kara smirks.

"Gingersnap."

Both raise their heads and spit, creating two jets of blue-white flame that nearly touch the ceilings. All six of the men curse and leap back from the door.

Kara shuts the door and throws the bar back across.

"Barrier fields to maximum, Kolex. Put Kleenex out here on picket duty. If they want to see me, they can talk to my lawyer or bring singularity protector to crack the shield."

* * *

 

> **"Following a string of highly-militarized raids by immigration agents on high-profile aliens, the president has asked of the Department of Homeland Security has tendered his resignation. Additionally we have been told that the United Nations and the European Union have made a joint proposal to allow for aliens living on Earth to seek asylum in a small handful of cities which have prepared for their arrival.   This is expected to take pressure off of national police forces when dealing with illegal aliens who are, well, aliens.  Several mayors here in the US have issued press releases endorsing similar ideas but it is unclear if this would be relevant given federal policy."**
> 
> **"Later in in the program, we will be interviewing refugees from the coast of Thailand and the mayor of a village in Sweden which is offering real estate to any aliens who settle there."**
> 
> **"You're watching Turn of the Earth, the best place for alien-related politics, culture and business news from all over the globe. I'm Siobhan Smythe..."**
> 
> **"...and I'm Alexandra DeWitt. Stay tuned."**


	24. A First Time for Several Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":  
> Where Kara submits an article and has journalistic ethics, L-Tech gets some employee perks, Sam holds a dinner party where someone looks familiar to Lena, Ruby has an idea and gets into some misdemeanor shipping (and vandalism).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE:
> 
> The way time-travel is handled here is sort of a hybrid approach. Within a universe time travel can't change anything because if you went back in time to change something, whatever you're changing was a result of you going back. Sort of similar to the 'grandfather paradox' where you can't go back and kill an ancestor because if you did, you never can go back and... People try to make changes and people like the Legends go back and fix them but it is only resetting what is supposed to be. Part of what is supposed to be is the Legends fixing it. 
> 
> Sara Lance and her found family is pre-ordained, is my point!
> 
> Between two different universes, things are messier because the bad guys can bleed things over from other universes and make permanent changes. That's the high stakes stuff where Ava and Sara need to be really on their A-Game as badass time wives...

### August 10, 2006 | Kara Danvers

National City, California

CatCo Plaza

CatCo Tower

 

 

Kara wets her thumb and quickly flips through the pages of her draft.

"Crap. Where's the infograp-"

Jimmy frisbees a printout at her from his desk across the aisle.

"Thanks, Mister O. It looks great."

"Welcome. And the new graphics designer is _good_ ," he agrees. "Scary good."

"One, two, three...yup, all here."

She hops to her feet and beelines for 'Features' which is where Snapper's hidey-hole is. He turned down a much better office in 'World and Nation' because he said he doesn't want to think of himself as covering world news but as doing investigations.

_Of all my editors, only Snapper still wants paper..._

She's still ten paces from his office when her phone alarm goes off telling her she's supposed to be at his desk.

"Ponytail!"

She takes the last steps at a jog and slaps the draft on his desk and leans over the desk, keeping to her side and using her biggest grin but also filling that corner of the room. Just intimidating enough to keep him civil but not so intimidating that it could get her in trouble.

"Right here, boss."

"You're late."

"Seemed like it would have been rude to knock Maria over."

"Who?"

"Cleaning lady," Kara explains, nodding to the hallway. "With a really loud vacuum and solid dance moves."

Sure enough, Maria is there with her earphones in, salsa music turned up and a tap of her foot as she wheels the vacuum over the carpet. All Kara's human co-workers are wincing at the noise but Snapper needed it pointed out.

_Hearing loss. File that away for the next time I need to one up him._

Snapper harrumphs.

"Better look at it before Cat calls Princess to her office," he grumbles.

_Yeah. I'm totally slacking off. That's why I'm tied with Hunter for most bylines with the rest of Savage even though they do politics and I do climate change and gizmos._

"Implications of Alien Technology in Disaster Management and Hurricane Prediction," he mumbles.

"A turd. At least it's polished. But that's a fuckin' terrible headline, Ponytail."

_High praise, given that anything less than Woodward and Bernstein is a 'turd' to him._

Kara shrugs.

"Science people tend to write journal article headlines, not newspaper ones. Since you need a actual science person for this, you get a rookie headliner."

Claire pipes up. She is one of Kara's closest allies on the blogs staff and the only other one doing non-politics, non-economics, non-opinion articles. Together with Mason, Claire is holding up the California market for used turtlenecks, peasant top and bell-bottoms. At some point she decided that if she was going to write the wildlife, nature and travel section she should walk around looking like she just left Redwoods National Park.

"What about the headline: 'Save us from Ourselves: Can Spaceships and Rescue Robots Prevent the Next Katrina?'" Claire suggests.

Snapper chews his pencil, nods and scratches out Kara's headline.

"That's workable. Learn from this, Ponytail. Next time you need a headline of your own so that Granola doesn't need to rescue you."

He stomps over to his whiteboard, smudges out the five by Kara's name and writes in six. He needs a least six more to have an issue of the print magazine ready but that's not her problem. He keeps trying to starve Kara out by assigning her the weirdest and hardest to write articles.  She gets back at him by writing an article for each, no matter the slog.

 _What would Astra say if I lost a battle of attrition to him?_ Kara wonders. _Disown me, most likely._

"Get out," Snapper growls.

Kara salutes him exactly how Alex taught her...the way a _superior_ returns a salute from an inferior officer.

"On it!"

"Want to try that new strain," she whispers to Claire on her way past. "The 'red' one."

She clicks her tongue and pats Kara's hand with her own henna painted one.

"Aunt Flo getting to you, huh?"

Kara makes a face.

"I hear you, girl. Better living through botany."

"Granola!" Snapper shouts.

"Where's your draft?"

"Index card with the link, boss. I didn't feel it was appropriate to kill a bunch of trees to write about illegal logging."

Snapper opens his mouth, readies a complaint and closes it again.

_Attagirl._

Kara snickers all the way across the floor and up two flights of stairs.

 

 

Walking up to Cat's office to see Snapper already there nearly makes Kara faint...until what looks like a six-foot tall coffee cup is projected in the middle of the room. Then the calves of what must be the Fifty Foot Woman fill the room, Birkenstocks, socks, ankle beads and all.

"Why hello Claire. And get the camera array off the floor, you pervert."

Ed smiles and shakes his head before holding out the mint dish. She shamelessly grabs a handful.

"Thanks, buddy."

Ed smiles.

"You had that hell in the rear view mirror look," he explains. "My wife has it for a couple days after, every time. _Cogito ergo, feminus et chocolato_."

Kara snickers.

"That's not real Latin."

Cat groans loud enough to be heard through the glass doors.

"Snapper, check your camera angle!" she snaps. "I have a footwear disaster in my office."

"Right," he huffs.

Kara tries not to laugh when Snapper's ink stained hand lunges towards Cat's desk, rendered fifty times its usual size by proximity to the sensor....and Cat Grant doesn't bat an eyelash.

He finally gets it sorted out and now the system is projecting him at his desk directly across from Cat at hers.

_Lena's good. If I didn't know that system existed or didn't have Kryptonian senses, I would assume he was here._

"Better, Carr."

A small finger taps Kara's midsection and she turns away before she starts eavesdropping. Carter is at 'her desk' which is smaller than her end table in the apartment and usually stashed away until Kara arrives so as not to make a half-time assistant look too important.

Apparently Carter is also allowed to have a desk.

"Hi, Carter."

"Hi, Kara."

"That was a big cup of coffee, wasn't it?"

He nods. Kara doesn't know much about autism--nor has she had time to read up--but compared to when she is alone with him, the added presence of Cat makes Carter much, much more expressive and happy.

"Mom bought one of those holo-conference kits," he whispers. "I think Mr. Snapper needs training on it though."

"Yeah, he does. He really does.  You know, my girlfriend invented that..."

"Really?"

He still hasn't looked up from his homework, which usually is good.  It means he's tuning out the extra stuff in the room...the stuff that stresses him out.

"Yeah.  It's only like, five percent alien tech.  We actually never _needed_ conference call tables so all we contributed were the cameras and the reflective particles.  Lena came up with the software, chassis, sensor arrangement...whole thing."

Kara glances at the textbook he has open, using the edge of ultraviolet to see through the printer paper he laid over the review quiz so he can't peek.

"Algebra, huh?  Want some help?"

"You're not my babysitter," he replies. Then he flinches.

_Kid, you are way too sweet for me to be mad at your for more than thirty seconds._

"I mean, I think my mom prefers it when you do important stuff."

Kara pulls up a chair.

"I can live with that. How's Finch?"

"He's good," Carter replies before reaching in to his bag, taking out a scrap of beef jerky and offering it to the tiny dragon curled up on top of the bag.

The male  _galata_ that Carter bonded with has sky-blue scales which are unusually thick and rough, almost like tree bark. Finch has been the slowest grower and the absolute runt of the clutch which was good luck. Finch is still only the size of a cat.

"How's the training?"

Carter sighs.

"He knows when I'm faking him out," he complains.

Finch trills happily.

"And he eavesdrops, apparently."

"Want some pointers?" Kara asks. "I know their weaknesses."

Finch opens his jaws and hisses. Carter clicks his tongue and the jaws snap shut and Finch retreats with a whiny growl.  For the first time, Carter looks up and makes eye contact.  Then he smiles.

"Heck, yeah. I think conference three is open."

"Lead on, sir knight and sir dragon."

 

 

Finch fidgeted and whined and turned his massive, sparkling compound eyes up at Carter a dozen times and Carter kept feeding him the grainy, low-protein treats until he cooperated. The first time a bit of real meat went down his gullet, Finch was showing off how well he understood.

_Now it's just time for the triple check._

"I think he's got it, Carter.  Have him do it one more time."

"Stay," Carter commands.  "Hide."

Finch walks over to a lamp in the middle of the table and pulls himself up to a regal posture, tail curled around his hind legs and wings folded artfully. One eye tilts to the paperweight on the table and with a shiver of scales...it's not a dragon on the conference table. It looks like it's just a fanciful and hefty brass paperweight.

"Good. Stay, Finch."

Carter places the treat at Finch's feet and, as Kara had hoped, Finch waits.

"Go," Carter adds.

Finch's neck strikes down viper-quick and he grabs the snack.

"Come."

Finch kicks off with his hind feet and reaches Carter with one mighty flap of his tiny wings, tossing sticky notes and printouts aside with the gust. He settles on Carter's shoulder and winds his tail loosely around the boy's neck. His scales gradually return to their normal blue.

"Good dragon."

Carter offers up another bit of Kara's jerky--she's been smoking it by the ovenful for her and Lena's--and Finch takes it, carefully keeping his knife-like rear teeth back.

"Amazing, Carter."

Cat is leaning against the doorway in the only way she can: powerfully. Somehow even this way--shoulder against the door, hips slouched, smiling--Cat looks like she's ready to storm into the room and set some things straight.

"Kara? A word."

"On it, boss."

"Mom, can I st-" Carter begins before Cat shuts him off.

"Yeah, sweetie. I'll reserve the room."

She swipes her thumb on the touchscreen by the door.

"Scheduling ready," the AI replies.

"Reserved to end of workday. No entry to employees besides myself. Grant, Cat."

"Reservation acknowledged."

"Thanks mom."

"You're welcome."

Cat holds the door open for Kara and waves her hand.

"Well?"

Apparently part of a walk-and-talk with Cat is taking a loop of the balcony that rings the entire top floor. Perhaps this way, no one can eavesdrop against the rustle of the wind that is only half muffled by the planters.

"What can I do for you, boss?"

"I want you to write an expose. I think I've seen you pissed off enough times that I can trust you to look for the blood in the water."

Kara sucks in a breath. Cat is better-dressed, nicer, and generally more of a functional human than Snapper Carr but they both are at heart, investigators. They both have heads on their wall. Big names and big egos brought down by stubborn research, harsh words and a wide audience. His victims are governors, CEOs, movie stars...hers are the same with the addition of a President of Mexico.

"Sure. Who on?"

"Lena Luthor."

"Oh?"

"Something's up. All of a sudden, she's dropping this technology that is clearly alien or alien-derived and she's not even trying to hide it."

"They are calling it Cosmic," Kara agress. "The consumer branch, at least."

"Exactly. But supposedly, she's turned her company around and is on the level. Worked with the FBI even… So why, after supposedly going straight, does it look like she's got access to Lex's toybox? Which last time I checked was built on theft of property and torture?"

Kara swallows.

_Cat doesn't know? Shit. This is not going to make her happy. At all. Nice job while it lasted._

"I can't do it," Kara replies.

Cat misses as step and almost twists her ankle. Instead she finds herself suspended a couple inches over the tiles, wearing only one of her three-thousand-dollar heels and with Kara's arm around her waist. Blue tendrils of static from Kara's superspeed dance along Kara's blouse and Cat's pantsuit and Cat's hair is standing up.

"Got you, boss. Going to...ah...going to..." Kara stammers, eyes averted.

"Put you down. You should kick off the other one, though. Just until your feet are under you."

"Right."

Cat gingerly tests her right foot when Kara puts her down. Her heart-rate is up and the infrared shows her skin warmer than normal.  Especially in certain places.  When she looks up at Kara, the eye contact is what sells it.

 _Bisexual theory on Cat Grant confirmed,_ Kara decides.

"Thanks."

"Glad to. Your assistant will have maintenance look at that section," Kara grumbles.

She lowers her glasses and stares at the tile. It's nothing but a signal for her--anything that would block her full senses would be opaque--but Winn was right, it has an intimidation factor to it. Even people who know she's Superwoman flinch and back down when she takes off her glasses. A mobster actually begged when she reached into her pocket for the case.

"That tile is fourteen millimeters off."

"Quit dodging, Kara. Explain."

Kara sighs.

"I'm dating Lena. It's serious."

Cat scoffs and looks at Kara, arms folded.

"I would not _lie_ about that," Kara insists.

Kara sees the red glint in her eyes catch some of Cat's jewelry. The spike of heat and energy that surges through her when the Destroyer stirs from its sleep came out at the lightest teasing of her regarding Lena.

_So that's scary. Need to keep an eye on myself when it comes to Lena._

Cat clicks her tongue, her head tilted to one side.. She has worked with Superman so she must have thought Kara was about to heat-vision her. As if Kara would be caught dead dumping destructive energy through a fragile sensory organ. A sensory organ she _needs_ to enjoy Lena.

"Interesting. I didn't think she was gay."

"She hid it from her family--can you blame her?--and the press. But based on personal experience, I assure you that she is," Kara joke. "So it can't be me.  Maura?  She's new but I think she's got the skills."

Cat holds out her hand.

"That was big of you, Kara. I know more than a few journalists who would have taken the job and ran interference, ethics be damned."

Glad to not be fired and gladder still that her temper did not scare Cat--ovaries of steel on this woman!--Kara shakes on it.

"Err, right. Besides, I'll be needed as a background interview I think."

"Oh?"

"That tech she's making? It's mine. I gave her access to my facilities and databases.  Pointed her to some wrecked spaceships. We're setting up a prototyping bay in the basement labs this weekend."

"Bold move," Cat reminds her. "You can't know with certainty what she'll do with that."

"Better to be bold than to live in fear and never fall in love."

Cat smiles.

"You say that like they're mutually exclusive.  This was a precondition she gave you on her first date?"

"Oh, no. This was me doing some pre-pre-engagement splurging on my girl."

"Engagement, huh? I want an invite."

"You'll have one.  I'm getting that law changed if I have to dangle every last homophobe in the country from a telephone pole. I figure six hours up there while Luthor and I do a two person, interracial, gay as fuck dance party...that'd break them. I've found that men dislike being powerless."

Cat's grin is now positively feral. She loops her arm in Kara's as they walk along.

"You know, they really do hate it."

* * *

 

 

###  **August 10, 2006 | Sam Arias**

National City, California

2510 Mojave Heights 

The Arias Household

 

 

The trill of an incoming call catches her ear from the living room. Sam vaults the couch and flops down, grabbing the iPad off the table. The contact name is 'princess' and Sam wets her lips and smoothes the silk of her blouse.

Ruby changes the angle of her spelling book so that she can't see.

_She's six. Does she...no way. She's too young._

Sam kept her blouse on while cooking dinner in case _this_ happened. She whispers a prayer to any gods that are handy and accepts the call.

"Lena, what can I do for you?"

"Question about this item on your proposal: foosball? What's that?"

Sam flushes.

"It's a table game...they were common in the other employee lounges I surveyed for the project."

Her lips curl into a smirk.

"Lee...have you never played foosball?"

A raised eyebrow and the upturned corner of a velvety lip--down girl, Sam scolds herself--answer the question.

"Beanbag chairs?" Sam suggests. "I mean, besides that one time we…"

A shake of the head.

"NERF darts?"

Lena shrugs.

"Pinball?"

Another shrug.

"Woman, you are a mess! We'll get one of these set up on the C-Suite floor. Limit it to ourselves and our staff. Set some hours of acceptable use."

"Sam, I don't thi-" Lena protests.

"Stop! Lena, you and I...we're paid for our brains, our ideas. Answering emails and writing reports. I've seen you do more in three hours when you're fresh than some executives manage in a week. So if it's eleven and you're losing your mind, you'll be glad for something mindless before that conference call to the Fuck It Standard Timezone or whatever it is that makes you so tired all the time."

Lena huffs.

"Provisional basis."

Sam smiles.

"You won't regret it."

The doorbell rings.

"Should go get that. One hour, Lena."

"Do I need to bring anything?"

"I went grocery shopping, Lena. Have to keep the spawn alive and all that. You, your girl and maybe a pen. Rubes may want an autograph."

"Right."

Lena blows Sam a kiss and Sam blows one back.

 _Totally normal ex-girlfriend behavior,_ Sam reminds herself. _I do it will all my exes. My...ex. God that's sad._

"Rubes, honey, can you go get the jello pops from the garage freezer?"

Ruby's head snaps up, her grin enormous.

"Can I use the stepstool?"

"If you drag your practice mat out first, yes."

"Awesome!"

The doorbell rings again as Sam approaches.

"Sara, were you raised in a barn?" a female voice hisses.

Unable to resist, Sam presses her ear to the door to listen to the argument.

"No, Ava. I was raised by cops...who taught me about getting off the damn street."

"Why did I agree to this?" Ava groans. "To any of it, really…"

"Because we'll be the cutest couple in the nursing home," Sara teases. " _Wifey_."

Sam opens the door. Two women are on her porch, each dressed up and yet polar opposites.

A small blonde with icy blue eyes and laser-cut muscle definition is in a sleeveless green dress and beside her stands a glamazon with a waterfall of dark blonde waves over the front of her suit jacket.

Between them is a disheveled looking man in a trenchcoat with a shiner on each eye. By the size of the bruises, Sam has the hunch that one came from a large fist and one from a smaller fist.

Sam met Sara before but it was a text chat so she has no idea which is which.

"Who's this guy? He looks like a reject from a detective novel."

"Say hello, Rip," the small one says.

"Sara, I assure you..."

The glamazon curls her left into a fist and slams it back into the man's gut before rifling through her purse for some kleenex to wipe the blood of her knuckles. Anyone standing two feet away would have been hard put to see the blow.

"Just hello, Rip," she warns.

"Hello," he wheezes.

"Nice one, Ava."

The look that she gives Sara in return is the softest, warmest, most disgustingly happy thing Sam ever saw...as if a smile from Sara was the only thing keeping Ava's soul in her body.

 _Okay,_ Sam decides. _She's so big because she needs to power those eyes._

"So is this your idea of bringing a dish for potluck?" Sam teases.

Ava blushes and Sara reaches up and squeezes her shoulder. Ava draws herself up and straightens out, posture just as square and straight as Alex's when she's in uniform.

"Prisoner. We didn't have time to get him back to the ship."

"You have a garden shed?" Sara asks. She whips a roll of duct tape out of her girlfriend's purse and gets a strip torn off. Rip flinched when he saw Sara's hand move.

_Guy learned his lesson._

Sam rolls her eyes.

"Bring him around the side. There's a crawl space under the garage."

When she is bending down to open the hatch, Sam hears a huff and spins around. Ava is on the ground, panting for air. Rip is circling Sara, breathing hard through his nose.

"Bad move, Rip."

"Mmmph!" he replies.

Rip lunges, trying to get his handcuff chain around her neck. Sam starts over to help but before she can, Sara grabs the garden hose, whips it around Rips neck and yanks him to the ground. Straddling his waist, she _beats_ him. Far more than is necessary to subdue him.

Sara's skills are scary. She doesn't fight like a cop. Twice it seems like she has to hesitate and change her grip. Like she has to remember how to do that _without_ killing.

"Sara!" Ava hisses.

"I'm fine. Walk it back, hot stuff."

Ava grabs Sara around the shoulders but rather than pulling her off, she grabs both of Sara's hands in one of hers and holds them over her head, leaning down to speak to her. It keeps Sara's hands off Rip and calms her but Sam thinks it would be red-hot foreplay if it was up against a wall.

"I love you, Sara Lance. Nothing will ever change that...nothing you are afraid of, nothing you do. Where you go, I follow. Your family is my family. But you don't _want_ to do this...not for him."

Sara looks down and gasps. She slackens and Ava draws her back into her arms, peppering Sara's ears and hair with kisses.

"Sam, be a dear?" Ava asks, nodding to the bruised and bloodied form of their hostage.

"Yeah, I can manage. You take care of your wife."

Rip is coming to and as Sam bends down to grab him, she sees him staring in the direction of the house. She whips around and sees Ruby at the window, making punching motions. The rage rises so fast that Sam doesn't remember yanking Rip off his feet. She doesn't even remember grabbing his throat.

"If you _ever_ look at my daughter again...I will pull your guts out your nose and rip your balls off and choke you with them. Understand?"

His eyes are the size of dinner plates. His fingers are trying to pry Sam's loose as she hosts him with a hand on his throat. His feet at scrabbling to get back to the ground and he's got a couple feet left to go.

"Mmmph!"

Sam rips the tape off.

"Do you undertand?"

 _"Vhoc's kiss,"_ Rip wheezes in a language Sam's never heard.

Her legs feel like jelly now.

 _I'm not supposed to hurt this man…_ Sam thinks.

_Why am I so tired suddenly?_

Sam comes to her senses on the couch. Ruby is chatting with Sara, discussing something Ruby learned in karate. Ava is worrying her hair, twisting the loose waves and biting her lip the whole time.

"Was that Kryptonian?" Ava croaks.

"I...I don't know," Sam admits.

Sara looks at the ceiling.

"Gideon, what language was that?"

A smoky voice with a British accent answers out of thin air.

"Stand by, Captain Lance."

_I think it's time for a drink._

"It was Kryptohavli, also called Standard Kryptonian. Rip appeared to be using some form of subconscious control mechanism on miss Arias. What is referred to as brainwashing in the twenty-first century."

"Is she Monarch?" Sara wonders aloud. "In this universe, I mean."

 _In this universe? Two drinks,_ Sam decides.

"No. Monarch is Kara Zor-El in all three instances. On this Earth, Kara Zor-El is well adjusted and has a fulfilling personal life. She respects human law. Her cousin is alive and she has not suffered the trauma that created the Monarchs on Earth-1, Earth-4 or Earth-22."

_There's an evil Kara? That's rich. Three drinks._

"I'm fine," Sam groans. "It's happened before him. I'm all alone and I just hear these things and pow! Instant migraine. Sometimes I get an urge to break something or run away but I fight it."

"Gideon?"

"I recommend we consult miss Zor-El. Her expertise in Kryptonian history and science is unparalleled on this Earth or any of the others."

"I need a drink," Sam decides.

Sara ruffles Ruby's hair and disappears. She comes back with a shopping bag and starts setting out enough red plastic cups, tequila, fruity liquers, chilled limes, salt shakers and whiskeys to get a whole sorority blackout drunk. Sam shudders to think what sort of hijinks Sara could get up to with a half-dozen drunk girls in sundresses and lip gloss.

"We brought booze," Sara grins.

"Always forget you had a wild side," Ava teases.

"No you didn't.  You've been reminded..."

Ava's face goes cherry-red.

"Well...I mean...I mean _generally!_ "

"Easy, babe. You know you're the only girl I want to get sloshed and dance on a table with."

Sam leans away from Sara and looks at Ava.

"She doesn't have an off switch, does she?"

Ava shakes her head.

"Flirting set to eleven at all times."

"And you are okay with that?"

Ava shrugs.

"I get to _put my hands_ on Sara while everyone else in the bar is stuck making sex eyes."

Ruby comes back into the room, carrying a pair of nun-chucks for some stupid reason.

"What are those?" Sara laughs.

"They're for fighting," Ruby insists, stomping her foot.

"Kid, I'm basically a ninja and I assure you, all that those can do is hit _you_ in the face."

"Now…"

Sara looks around. She goes over to the doorframe to the rec room and runs her fingers around the edges. Two yardsticks fall into her hands.

_I completely forgot about those._

Sam had hoped to impress Lena with some DIY home repair but once she started dating Kara, it made more sense to hire a contractor.

"We're going to be careful, right?" Sara asks Ruby.

Ruby nods eagerly and Sara tosses her the yardstick.

"It's a stick."

"It's a bo staff, silly. Hold yours out, straight up and down."

Sara makes a series of lightning quick strikes towards Ruby, pulling back each time. Each becomes nothing more than a poke with the plastic end of the stick. Left and right knees, left ankle and a series of three taps on the ribs. One sort of tickling thing along Rube's ear.

"Those could have knocked you on the ground, knocked all the air out of your lungs and knocked you out, kid. And if you weren't so cute...if it was a real fight...I would do it even faster."

"Whoa."

"Flexible weapon," Sara explains. "And you can use it to knock someone out. That's a lot harder with a sword."

"Teach me!" Ruby begs.

Sara glances to Ava and they exchange some unspoken idea which ends in a nod.

"I'm not sure what the League of Assas-"

"Ahem!" Ava coughs.

"The League of Adventure would say about that. It's super secret where I learned all this. There was a magic fountain and everything."

Ruby pouts.

"Please!"

Sara looks back at Ava, who seems a bit short on breath.

_Ahh. She's watching her girl with kids. Watching Sara play cool aunt for a few minutes...not a big leap for Ava to imagine Mommy Sara from there._

"Sure. I'll schedule with your mom."

The doorbell rings again and Sam scurries towards the door.

"Hi, Sam."

Lena is resplendent as ever in a crimson-trimmed black velvet gown with ruffled sleeves. Something that would suit the Oscars red carpet. Kara did her best to match but even most one-percenters don't own the kind of ridiculous wardrobe Lena does. Her fashion style is the product of nigh-unlimited money and not being allowed to dress herself until her mother was a fugitive from justice.

Kara's arms are wide open.

_Jesus, she's worse about begging for a hug than Ruby._

"Kara," Sam sighs. "Nice to see you again."

_Wait. This actually feels nice. Why? I'm mad at Kara. Mad at her. She gets to date Lena. To put her arms...those arms...around Lena. It does feel nice, though._

"Lena…" Sam begins. "Wow."

"You do realize it's going to be barbecue, salads and backyard s'mores, right?"

Lena gives Kara a confused look.

"She means you need something less expensive. Something you can be comfortable in, maybe get some chocolate on. It's cool, babe. We can have something brought up."

"Dunno, I think she's about my size. I'll loan her something...might be snug but she can make it work, I'm sure."

Sara is in the doorway.

"I know you," Lena realizes. "You saved my life."

"And you told a short joke," Sara shoots back. "While I was still rescuing you."

"I was groggy," Lena grumbles. "And terrified."

Ava has appeared behind Sara--without a sound--like some sort of pantsuited ghost.

"Ladies, allow me to introduce Ava. My wife."

Lena swallows.

"Neat!" Kara exclaims. "How'd you do it?"

"A clever enough lawyer could put together the tax forms, power of attorney and so on," Lena reminds her.

Sara blinks.

"Uhh, no. We're _married_ married. We went to the courthouse and I begged the minister at Jax's church? Rings, kissing, my mom and sister throwing rainbow popcorn, that sort of thing?"

Ava and Sara glance at each other.

"Do you not...have that option?" Ava asks.

The disembodied voice with the full-bodied husk answers.

"It appears that same-sex marriage is not yet legal in the United States on Earth-38."

Kara folds her arms.

"How'd you do it? The trans-universal tunneling."

Lena raises her eyebrow to back Kara up.

"Hyperexcitation of temporally unstable neg-en, neg-mass coils in a spinning-ring arrangement," the voice answers.

"Damn. I should've thought of that. Wait!" Kara squeals.

"Wouldn't that allow time travel?"

Ava pinches two fingers together.

"Minor time travel. We can bring stuff back and forth but we can't change stuff...not permanently. Just sort of put it back, keep the existing line stable.  You do _not_ want to know what happens if a paradox forms."

Sara nods.

"Most of the people trying to change time are the world domination sort. Go back to conquer ancient Rome with ray guns, that sort of thing. It's the universe jumpers you have to worry about. If they manage to make a stable rift, they _can_ change stuff in the past by mixing the timelines."

Lena gasps.

"Multiverse theory. It's real?"

Kara high-fives her.

"Yes!"

"Can we eat now?" Sam begs. "My poor, stupid accountant brain can't handle this."

"Don't worry," Sara coos. "I still think your brain is sexy."

Lena's eyebrow goes up and her lips tighten. Sam's seen that look before...exactly once. That little outburst of Lena's ended with a horndog professor getting divorced and then losing his house to the Luthor family lawyers.  Lena paid off the impound guy and the ex-wife and picked up the professor's cherished Lamborghini at auction for ten dollars.  Four hundred ten if the bribes were included.

"Get your coats?" Sara and Ava offer.

"Both of you? Kinky," Kara teases.

Ava takes Kara's and Sara takes Lena's. A sparkle lights Sara's eyes when she sees Lena's shoulders bare.

"Call the museum," she whispers to Ava. "The masterpiece escaped."

_Assassin or not, she does not get to ogle Lena._

"Hey, horndogs!" Ruby calls from the kitchen. "I'm hungry, so get started on some normal hot dogs, please!"

 _How did my little girl learn that word?_ Sam wonders. _Dangers of smart children, I suppose._

All five women burst into laughter.

"Better do as she says," Sara finally wheezes. "I taught her some staff attacks."

* * *

 

###  **August 10, 2006 | Ruby Arias**

National City, California

2510 Mojave Heights 

The Arias household

 

Ruby's supposed to be in bed but she has work to do. So she sits on the staircase with a notepad in hand, watching the grown-ups.

They all have wine which 'only grownups can drink' but since it seems to make them stupid, Ruby can't imagine why they do.

"Ooh!" Kara exclaims, pointing at the iPad. "S'nice."

Ava looks over her shoulder.

"It's a beach, Kara. Does it really say 'Alex and Maggie' to you?"

Kara shrugs.

"Not like they can get married at a shooting range."

Lena hoists her cup over her head, spilling a little on her T-Shirt.

"Paintball! Bridesmaids paintball."

"Hell, yeah!" Sara squeals. "Writing that down."

Ruby looks at her mom. Her eyes are weird and her hair is stuck to her forehead even though it's not hot today.

"What do we have?" her mom asks.

"Uh, you, me, Kara, Ava and Lena for bridesmaids. Winn for best man. Everyone hugs Eliza...that's it."

"Ugh!" Lena groans. "It's too hard to plan a wedding that's _secret. Why can't they just..."_

She smashes her fists together making kissy noises. She looks really sleepy.

"In public? They're a great couple."

"Because Superwoman can't just overthrow the government to make it legal," Kara replies. "Not unless I was a lot drunker."

Lena reaches for one of the bottles and Sara swats her hand away.

"Kid's watching," she whispers.

Everyone turns to check, even Kara...even Superwoman. Ruby squeaks in surprise.

"She is a ninja."

Her mom starts to get up but falls down. Kara grabs her and holds her on her lap. A little whiny sound--like a hungry puppy--comes from Sam's lips.

Ruby snaps her notebook shut and runs upstairs. She turns off the light and jumps into bed.

Staring at Mr. Teeth in the darkness, she pokes the stuffed tiger on the nose.

"I need to figure this out, Toothy. Maybe I can get some advice."

 

* * *

 

###  **BONUS SCENE**

* * *

 

 

###  **August 13, 2006 | Maggie Sawyer**

National City, California 

National City Police Department, Central Station (Precinct 18)

Floor Six, Serious Crimes / Vice / Homicide

 

Maggie shakes the last few sad drops of caramel from the bottle into her coffee. A shadow looms across the cabinet in front of her. Someone's standing _right behind her_ and Maggie feels every muscle in her back tense up.

Hitchcock puts her hand on Maggie's shoulder and hands her a torn-off carbon copy of a ticket.

"Thought you might want this," she whispers. "Before the wrong person gets it."

Maggie looks at the ticket.

_Vandalism. Destruction of property. Assault.  Six year olds?_

"What is this world coming to?" she groans.

"You start asking that, you're already old," Jack jokes.

"Look at this," she sighs, holding out the ticket.

"Huh. Seems pretty basic."

"Look again. These are _kids,_ Jack. See there where it says 'octopus'?"

"Yeah?"

Maggie leans close.

"That's the code for 'Martian' in the fish tank. They don't put human kids in Serious Crimes."

"Really? I feel like we would have _seen_ Martians."

"Hmm. Apparently there's a whole underground civilization. Whole underground war. Fairy godmother says that most of the ones here are greens because they're losing the war."

"Huh."

"Octopus is because they can shapeshift and I guess when they change, it's like they open up into a zillion tentacles and sort of wriggle until they get the new shape."

"That sounds like the creepy Japanese porn we found in that drug den."

Maggie chuckles.

"That's not why.  Besides, octop...octopi are smart, too."

"You were going to say 'octopussy', weren't you?"

"No," Maggie growls. "My lady and I are just fine in that department."

Jack Green makes a 'go on' gesture and she just smiles.

"You cannot _imagine,_ " Maggie whispers.

She pushes open the interrogation room.

Three little girls face her across the table. One girl's face is a deep tan with shiny black hair in a side braid and two of the girl's faces grass-green with three big ridges of bone on their hairless heads and giant red-and-black eyes.

"Hi," the human girl says, folding her arms.

"I'm Ruby. This is T'fan and S'lar. Tiffany and Skylar at school."

Maggie sits down.

"Clever."

Ruby smiles.

"You know Alex, right?"

"What?"

"It's okay. I only know because my mom knows Lena Luthor and...y'know."

"I really don't," Jack jokes from the doorway.

Ruby reaches into her pocket and pulls out three hundred-dollar bills.

"Here's the fine thingy for the mailbox."

"Where'd you get it?"

"My mom's purse. She has like, a really important job. I only broke that guys mailbox to get your attention because you like, always show up when it's aliens."

"She's got you figured out!" Jack crows.

Maggie turns around and flips him off where the kids can't see.

"I just needed to talk to you, Mrs. Sawyer."

"Maggie."

"Detective Maggie?"

Jack laughs and this time, so does she.

"Sure."

"We're good, Jack. Could you take the money and see if you can fast-track the citation? Keep it quiet?"

He takes the money and the slip and goes.

"What did you want to talk about."

Ruby sighs.

"I think my mom is in love with Superwoman and aunt Lena but she's being dumb. She won't say it. I want my aunt Lena around more and I want my mom to be happy. I have evidence."

Ruby hands over a notepad and Maggie reads through it.

_Yup, her mom has it bad. But...maybe so does Lena? I think Kara would fuck, marry, or kill a toaster oven if it made Lena happy. There's something to work with here._

"Ruby, do you know what 'shipping' is?"


	25. OVER THE WIRE: Breaking News From CatCo Worldwide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "OVER THE WIRE" is a series of sound bites from news broadcasts or political speeches, covering other events around the world over a period of time.
> 
> This installment covers the August 15, 2006.

 

###  **August 15, 2006 | Phil Carlson, SEAL Team Six**

Operation "Neptune Spear"

Pakistani Airspace, 90 miles to Afghan border

Black Hawk Helicopter, 200 feet altitude

 

Nothing feels real right now. The thump of the rotors overhead and the shaking of the chopper's floor and the chatter of his team-mates. The lingering heat on the barrel of his rifle. The fleck of blood on his goggles...none of it feels real.

Phil plays it back in his head, trying to get it right.

Rounding the top of the staircase and seeing Osama bin Laden standing there, practically already in his sights. The trembling woman in front of him, being nudged towards Phil and his buddies. Two sets of eyes going to the AK-47 a few feet from the bed. Phil pulling the trigger. Two of the three slugs going straight between the eyes. One going into the wall.

His squad leader radioing JSOC to confirm the kill.

After that, the other tasks all seemed so simple. Stripping hard drives and cutting cords and bagging DVDs like he was an IT guy or like he was cleaning up a Best Buy storeroom. Tossing explosives into the wrecked helicopter to destroy the high-tech toys inside it, like any other Nashville boy working a scrapyard. Like his best friend Tim, who works at the scrapyard next to their high school.

"It's like any other job."

"You good?" one of his buddies asks.

"No idea!" Phil admits.

"Everyone hold on!" the pilot shouts.

"Fuckfuckfuck…" he mutters.

Everything flips and a shower of flares can be seen outside the cockpit, baiting the heat-seeker away. The chopper shakes when the missile explodes even with the life-saving distance between them.

Phil pulls open a pocket on his vest and pulls out the iPod his daughter gave him. It's contraband as fuck to have personal electronics here but if he's going to die, he'd rather hear this song she was talking about.

He presses play and hears Skylar's voice.

"Mommy said I should send you this. So you could play it if you're scared."

Something hits the side of his head.  Hard.

 

 

Phil feels something warm and damp inside his body armor. His ears are ringing and he thinks his ankle is broken. That or someone ran it through a trash compactor.

_I can feel pain, so I guess I won't be in a wheelchair._

A woman's face appears upside-down over his own. Blue light halos her head and tucked under her arm she has a helmet. It looks more like a motorcycle helmet than military gear, smooth and shiny. She looks him over, her yellow eyes brighter than they _should_ be in the middle of the night. A few drops of sweat shine on her dark skin.

"Didn't know they made black angels," Phil mumbles.

"Dude!"

She slaps his chest with the back of her hand.

"Mind your fuckin' manners."

"Sorry. Hit my head, I think."

She snorts.

"Should've hit it harder. Knocked the racism out."

"And you should be sorry. You guys just won the gold medal in cockblocking," she grumbles.

"Am I alive?"

She pinches his hand.

"Ow!"

"Looks like it. Smart thought, playing the recording," she sighs. "Made it easy to find you. Your daughter gave you that?"

"Yeah."

"She takes good care of her dad."

The mystery woman places a big, metal-gloved hand on his shoulder and squeezes.

"Your bosses were too stubborn to ask for help...as usual."

Phil's head feels like it's been cracked open but he can see several medics swarming the chopper and none of them are over here so it must not be that bad.

"This is not the airbase," Phil realizes.

"Nope. You're onboard the _USS John F Kennedy._ I hauled you clowns straight to the aircraft carrier...since you clearly can't fly a helicopter for shit."

She looks at him, snickers, then pats his shoulder again.

"Look, I got to go. Nice meeting you. And thanks for your service."

She seats her helmet back on her head and taps something on the side. The face plate just _materializes_ out of fuck-all and slowly tints to black.

Then she's off the deck and there's a hole in the clouds.

 

* * *

 

###  **August 15, 2006 | Phil Carlson, SEAL Team Six**

Indian Ocean

USS John F Kennedy, Sickbay

 

 

"Hey," Phil hisses at the nurse hunched over the laptop.

"Can I watch?"

The nurse scoots her chair as close at it will get to the bed.

> **Windchimes wave all around Superwoman's black-robed figure. With her stand five other aliens and behind her, a small human woman fiddles with the clasps on her handbag.**
> 
> **"It is not common knowledge but among those killed on September 11th were alien-Americans who had disguised themselves and were working in offices and businesses nearby. One was running a food cart next door. A top-secret government team located and removed their bodies from the debris to prevent public panic."**
> 
> **"They were victims too. Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda murdered them in their places of work, in the land they chose as their home. On behalf of the Kryptonian Republic, I offer my thanks to the brave men and women who worked to bring him to justice. As the Head of the Council, I offer my condolences to the families and home planets of the victims."**
> 
> **"To the family of Fen Tonor, who died at her desk in the North tower and to the Coluan people...know that justice has been done for your daughter."**
> 
> **"To the family of Shol and Khe Johii, who died while serving breakfast and selling newspapers and to the Rakni-Xindan people...know that justice has been done for your sons."**
> 
> **"To the family of Melinda Rice who died here in this field on the way to see to her granddaughter Mya...know that justice has been done for your family."**
> 
> **"To the comrades in arms of Chief Petty Officer William Dufense who was killed in the Pentagon, know that he died as an American and a Marine. That he died wishing he could show you who he really was and tell you how much it meant to serve. Mars lost one of its few surviving sons that day, and America lost a man who fled a century of war on one planet but still volunteered to defend his new home. To his sons and daughters, I offer safe passage to Earth, residency and citizenship on behalf of a grateful nation."**
> 
> **"To all those aliens who chose the United States of America as their home, who chose to take Lady Liberty up on her offer of freedom and opportunity, know that you _are_ Americans. You shared this grief. Share in the healing."**

"Whoa…"

The nurse grabs Phil and kisses his cheek.

"Sorry!"

"I'm married. And injured," he reminds her.

"Sorry. I just got carried away. I can't believe I got to meet her in person! Huge thanks for that!"

She rolls up her sleeve to show off something written on the inside of her arm. It's not in any language Phil's ever heard of.

"I took like a million photos," she admits. "When I rotate out, I think I'm going to get a tattoo of it."

"What…" Phil groans. "...are you talking about?"

She rolls her eyes.

"Hello? _You_ called Superwoman to bail you guys out, remember? I guess she grabbed your chopper before it hit the ground and hauled it here. Good thing, too. The back half looked like string cheese when she dropped it on the deck. She was the one who woke you up deck."

_Not on purpose. I just thought my daughter had sent me the song by Miley...whoever and wanted to listen to it before I died._

"It was kind of a snap decision," Phil sighs. "I wasn't supposed to radio for help."

"Secret's safe with me."

* * *

 

###  **August 15, 2006 | Lillian Luthor**

Northwest Iran

LuthorCorp Mineral Facility

 

 

"Mrs. Luthor?"

Lillian does not look up. Looking up would give this man the idea he was important.

"Speak."

"We have a full count on the dispersal canisters. There are still six thousand of them with both working radios and intact detonators."

She scratches the pen across the contract and puts it back in the inkwell.

"Do we have a GPS fix for each?"

"Yes. They appear to be clustered at FBI, CIA and major metropolitan police departments in the United States and in military installations in most of Western Europe."

"Have the hackers check the duty shifts at each facility. Time the detonation to whenever the most staff are on duty. Set a timer to send out the next video one hour later."

"Yes, ma'am."

He turns to leave.

"Don't interrupt me in the future. Never second guess me. I don't like having to repeat orders I've already given."

"U-understood."

He locks the door behind himself. Lillian reaches into her desk drawer and pulls out the burner phone she uses for the prison warden.

"It's been long enough, Lex. Time to get back to work."


	26. #StopTheBans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where a bird-woman and a shape shifter take each other home to meet the families and settle the werewolf-or-vampire sexiness debate, Enchantress is on probation, a hypocritical preacher picketing Planned Parenthood finds out that he cannot intimidate eldritch spirits who are doing community service, Bibles may be flammable and not intended to exorcise pre-Aztec goddesses, and a trans teen down on their luck finds some help, some treatment, and some big sister figures and even super-heroines need to get well-woman checks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE #1:
> 
> Hello, my lovelies. This chapter is going to be a slight diversion from the plot. After the awful anti-abortion laws in Georgia, Alabama, Ohio and elsewhere, I decided to put a chapter in each of my various yarns dealing with direct action (by which I mean marches, protests, sit ins, interviews) to defend women's rights and reproductive justice.  
> It may not fix the real world but fanfic is all about creating worlds we prefer, isn't it?
> 
> AUTHOR'S NOTE #2:
> 
> Kendra Saunders is my Hawkgirl, just as she is in Season 1 of the Legends of Tomorrow. She's from Portland. Mari McCabe is the Vixen in the modern world having inherited it from Amaya as depicted in Legends of Tomorrow. She is from Detroit.
> 
> They are on a road trip to visit their parents and come out to both families.  
> Batman donated a car for the trip and Batwoman gave them a list of things to do on their trip titled "Twelve Things to Do On The Interstate When You're a Lesbian."  
> AUTHOR'S NOTE #3:  
> This is the same June Moore/Enchantress we see in the movie Suicide Squad but in this case the Justice League was able to subdue her...Harley Quinn didn't stab her in revenge for the Joker's death because she is so over the Joker she wouldn't stab a sushi roll for his pasty ass.
> 
> June is the human host and she is a graphics designer here, as is comics canon. After the events surrounding Enchantress' escape from Belle Reve, Batman and Superman were not amused to discover the Task Force X Program and took over the inmates. In June's case, the human host had never been charged with a crime so they essentially put her on probation.
> 
> With her is Raven (of Teen Titans) who is a powerful sorceress and the daughter of a incredibly dangerous demon and Natasha Irons, who is the half-human, half-robot superhero Cyborg in one alternate reality.
> 
> Cyborg and Raven are Teen Titans and they're acting as supervision for June as she does her probation.

 

### August 18, 2006 | Mari McCabe ("Vixen")

US Highway 30 West

Rural Oregon

 

 

Kendra's ice blue eyes flick towards the passenger seat.

"C'mon, babe…"

Mari groans.

"This is so stupid. I didn't even _like_ those goddamned books."

It's over the moment Kendra's lips pout and they both know it. Mari has no idea where this wardrobe of Kendra's came from and she's hoping to avoid shredding any more of it with her teeth.  No simple feat with Kendra decked out in a swishy sundress with a past-the-knee skirt and a silky feel. Not modern fashion at all. Mari suspects that someone runs an Etsy shop which sells tailored replicas of prop dresses because if that isn't the _exact_ dress Marilyn Monroe wore on the 'Seven Year Itch' she'll eat the seat covers.

It doesn't help that Kendra has the figure of a Golden Age bombshell and same hair--hazelnut with a strawberry shine--that the actress had had before she started calling herself Marilyn. Kendra's wings droop causally in the back seat and the feathers shiver in the wind.

_The wings. She picked it because of her wings. She wants to look like Marilyn Monroe's angel returned to earth._

"Ugh," Mari groans. "Fine. I get to shower first."

"You get to _undress_ first," Kendra corrects her. "I'm not peeling this off just to go shower alone like some kind of nun."

"Says the Catholic girl."

"Yeah. Well, me joining would be an insult to nuns. They're terrifying...way more so than me."

"Sister Mary Elizabeth wasn't. Seemed perfectly nice."

"She stepped in front of a _fire hose_ , Mari. She whacked a riot cop's helmet with a plastic ruler and the boy started praying. She could've died if his buddies thought that was 'hostile'."

"Yeah. Seemed badass, not terrifying."

Kendra snorts and her freckled cheeks wiggle.

"What do you think that cop felt?"

They ride in silence for another five miles.

"So, what you're saying is nuns ar-"

Kendra lifts her right hand from the wheel and pokes Mari's shoulder.

"Hard-fucking-core. It's like signing up to work for a charity except you stay there until you die and you have to be poor and no matter how stubborn or hard-working brave you are, men get all the credit."

"I thought about being one, when I was little."

"Really?"

"Mmm-hmm. Sort of gave up when I realized I wanted to kiss a girl. I mean, that would be taking the vows just so I didn't have to live the life I wanted to."

"I, for one, support not-nun Kendra and her mission to kiss girls."

"Aww, you're so sweet when you're being self-serving!"

"So nunning is like any other job but with a vow of poverty," Mari jokes.

"Less reminder of sexism, more following up on my dare. If you didn't want to be forced to do something weird, you should've just kissed the girl."

_Yes, yes I should have._

Perhaps the shame of this will remind Mari that two-player sessions of truth or dare, never-have- I-ever or spin-the-bottle are easily resolved.

"Takes a minute," Mari reminds her.

She closes her eyes and tries to remember what it looked like, standing there at the edge of the highway while Kendra changed the tire. The wolf bitch stared Mari down over the stag's carcass as if it knew what she was...as if it knew she was facing Vixen not some ordinary human. Mari wondered if the wolf was prowling the edges of her mind through the Red, sniffing the veins of life that run through Earth, trying to take hold through the totem.

After a few moments in the Red's chilly embrace Mari finds the beast, racing through the trees with her packmates, nipping playfully at her nearly-grown cubs.

Mari draws the beast's spirit in along with a lungful of cool air. She throws her head back and howls, long and loud as her lungs allow. When she opens her eyes, Kendra's thumb is circling her palm and her eyes are glued to the road.

"That was hot," Kendra admits, moistening her lips. "You're hot...I mean, it looks good on you."

Mari flips down the passenger side visor and checks the mirror. The transformation is past halfway but at least it seems to be stable. Her face wears a fluffy coat of beige fur and her nose is longer and straighter. Her palms are rough. The jeans she picked this morning no longer fit. Her legs are longer and more muscular and...

_Fuck._

"I-I-I lik... " Kendra stammers. "The tail. It's hot."

"Kendra…"

"What?" she asks, louder and angrier than she probably meant to be.

"Are you sure it's safe to drive while you're rubbing your legs together like that? What if you need to reach the brake pedal?"

_It would be damn near impossible, that's what...you can't try to rub one out and drive a stick at the same time._

Kendra shivers as she forces herself to relax. The smell of a woman enters Mari's nostrils a moment later and she can feel her too-sharp teeth clench.

"This whole werewolf thing really works on you, doesn't it? Sweetheart, are you a furry?"

 _It works on me too,_ Mari thinks. _Maybe I shouldn't have teased her. Gods and Spirits, that pussy smells delicious._

"No! I just really loved the books, okay?"

Mari laughs. The sound is rough and snarl-like, surprising her own ears.

"Bullshit. You always told me you were Team Edward."

"I was. I mean, I am. I was just curious what you'd sound like if you howled like a wolf."

"Pull over, now."

"Looks good about a half mile up, is that soon enough?"

"It'll do. And take off your nice dress. Wouldn't want the big bad wolf tearing it when she chases you, now would we?"

_Such strong hands I have, the better to catch you with..._

The blush in Kendra's cheeks is now darker than the redwoods that surround them.

 

 

Mari wakes with a start. She's curled up on top of what looks like their emergency blanket which is on top of a fragrant mat of forest moss. She doesn't remember how the blanket got here. It's _freezing._ Kendra is beside her, sleeping face down. She looks positively cozy but unlike Mari, she can wrap her wings around herself as a blanket.

Lifting a wing for a peek, Mari sees that a blotchy flush colors Kendra's skin, filling the gaps between her freckles. Dozens of faint red marks on her ribs and hips mark where Mari's shifted fingernails dug in. Two pairs of pinprick purple marks at the nape of the neck show where Mari's teeth pressed hardest as she pinned Kendra down, teeth on her neck as pressed her lover's face into the fragrant blanket and rode until her legs gave out.

It's nighttime now and for all Mari knows, it's nighttime the next day. They were well and truly exhausted.

Something is tickling the back of her mouth, making her gag. She hacks and hacks until she produces one of the fluffy, formless feathers that lie closest to the skin on Kendra's wings.

"Bleh."

Mari flicks the feather away.

"Ken, baby, time to wake up."

"No," Kendra pouts, squeezing her eyes shut and rolling over.

Mari spies the perfect weapon. One of the stiff-edged flight feathers came out during their little game and is in easy reach. The tip is intact and the whole thing is supple and well-weighted. It's a flawless example.

_I think I'll use these as quills for the wedding invitations._

"All right, then. Drastic measures. Let's see how well you can sleep through this!"

Kendra jerks upright after the third swish of the feather against her nipple.

"Fine. I'm up, I'm up."

Mari rewards Kendra with a single, slow, teasing drag of the feather's tip from her nipple to her navel where she flicks it a few times.

"Gah! Stop."

It's hard to stop when the giggling makes Kendra's breasts bounce so magically and her hands seize Mari's hips but Mari manages.

"Morning, pigeon."

"Morning, tiger."

Kendra hums.

"You're okay with that, right? That...that I like how it is when you...when you take me? How it feels when you're an animal? God! I don't think there are words. No one else has sex that good so no one made up words."

Mari sighs.

"I'm used to channeling. And…"

She chews her lip.

"And it's something you would be exposed to anyway, living with me. Sometimes I get a kick out of channeling, sometimes not. But I always get a kick out of you."

"Good," Kendra sighs. "I don't want shifting or channeling or role play to be something you do for me but you actually resent it."

Mari squeezes her hand.

"It's all good, lover. We should get moving before your family panics. Sounds like your mom is the type to wonder why we haven't checked in to the motel. Want to head back to the car?"

Kendra snickers.

"Do you even know the way? Wait here."

She stands up, cracks her knuckles and takes flight with a huge leap and three powerful wingbeats. Moving slowly until she finds an opening, Kendra vanishes above the canopy.

* * *

### August 19, 2006 | June Moone (human host of "Enchantress")

Salem, Oregon

June Moone's Apartment 

a.k.a.

Lair of the Enchantress, the Tyrant of the Void Beyond the Stars, the Terrible One, the Devourer of the Cosmos

 

 

June stirs, cracking one eye open the tiniest bit. It's morning judging by the buttery sunlight that slices the gap in the curtains. Something hard and lukewarm is under her cheek.

She opens her eyes the rest of the way. Looking up, she sees a limp cock on a waxed-smooth body with deeply cut fissures of muscle. Looking down, she sees the swell of a woman's ass and the back of a toned thigh. The woman's legs are twined amongst her playmates and her sex is fragrant and radiates warmth on the tip of June's nose. With the lights off, it's hard to make anything else out without moving and moving would wake her bedmates.

June wishes this was the first time she'd woken up hungover, sore and face down in genitals. Unfortunately that would be a lie. Part of her post-escape therapy was never lying to herself.

"Raven?" she groans.

No answer.

"Natasha?"

No answer.

June nips the back of the woman's thigh.

"Ahh," her victim yelps. "Mercy, your holiness."

_That explains a lot. Enchantress did this._

_I did. My flesh is to be worshiped!_

_Our flesh,_ June reminds her.

_Ours. Be glad I gave it back while you slept._

"Light," June commands.

An orb of pure white flickers above the top of June's head, lighting the scene around her but not getting in her eyes.

If she uses too much magic, the conduit will be opened and the Enchantress will take over and probably look for food. June forgot to go grocery shopping this week. If Raven is busy, the chances of getting the insane goddess calmed down before she tears Oregon off the North American continent are slim.

Her bedmates have black skin with neon green stripes. They are and slick and utterly hairless. A thin sheen of gel-like fluid covers their bodies. The female has a pair of leathery wings and a curtain of twitching tendrils are anchored to the back of her skull.

"What did you do today, June?" she asks the ceiling.

"Oh, not much. Woke up naked on top of a pair of Eldritch beasts my evil twin created as sex slaves...y'know. Tuesday."

"Un-be-fucking-lievable."

June's phone rings and she turns her head to track the noise. It's coming from under a pile of towels, clothing and empty lube containers by the doorway.

"Phone," she demands, holding out her hand.

The phone throws the pile off and zips over to her hand, smacking into her palm.

Just after eleven in the morning. Texts from her roommates.

 **CyberPunk:** Your other half gave us quite the show last night! ;-) Text me when you get up, June-bug. I want to be sure you're alright.

 **Gothic:** We're showing the flag at Planned Parenthood today. Wondy's sources say something is up here. Maybe our presence will discourage them.

June bites her lip and texts back. A bit of fresh air will help and it's not like she's behind on this deadline.

 **TwoForOne:** Let me pour coffee on myself and I'll join you.

 **CPunk & Gothic: **Can you hit up a drive-through instead? We could use some sugar to help us survive the 14th century.

 **TwoForOne:** Sure. Text me your orders.

_I can afford to buy coffee in shops now. Spooky._

Business is good since she started working with Enchantress on the web design. Turns out that having a business partner with an alien, inscrutable thought process and zero shame makes her 'innovative' and 'provocative' and 'a new voice' according to the Webby Award nomination she received. If only Northwestern Methodist University knew what sort of horror it was that picked their website's color palette and the brochure's geometry. June vetoed the idea of putting a subliminal sigil in the background of the logo.

June gets to her feet and stretches, popping her elbows and cracking her knuckles.

"Stay here," June tells the golems. "Entertain yourselves."

The female rises to her knees and turns her giant, bright red eyes up to June.

"As you wish, your worship. How else may we be of service?"

June chews her lip.

She points at the smart speaker Natasha installed.

"Order groceries. Read that list and tell them to leave the delivery at the door. Wait until they leave and bring it in."

For some reason, these things are smart enough to order groceries, replace a busted light fixture and even change her car's oil -- never again, watching them drink the runoff was too much -- but not to put on a pair of pants to get the door.

"As you say, it shall be."

 

 

June parks more than a block away from the clinic.

It's worse than usual today because the pastor is there. The protesters must be a hundred strong and they're leaping in front of every car that tries to pull in the driveway.

He's not a local. He's from somewhere in rural Oregon, where they long for the bad old days and where the churches like to one-up each other for sheer awfulness just to spite the cities and the liberal state government. As if they can call off the march of time just be being as far opposed to Portland as possible.

They've never gotten his name because he does not speak to "sluts" and "jezebels". As far as Natasha, Raven and June are concerned, he's Pastor Asshole.

When the Justice League put June at the kiddie table a year ago, it felt like a slap in the face. Now she realizes it was a second chance...a chance to get her head on straight after the Suicide Squad was disbanded. A chance to decide if she was June Moone, graphic designer with mental illness or if she was June Moone, the Justice League's secret weapon.

An escaped fugitive they keep failing to catch…officially.

A mousy redhead no one will ever notice in the park with her sketchpad. A woman whose body courses with energy not of this world. A body too out of sync for microphones or security cameras. A nobody who happens to be host to a lunatic goddess with a sex drive bigger than the solar system and ego the size of a galaxy.

The perfect way for some supervillian's guts to end up splattered all over his safe house's ceiling after the local officials refuse to turn him over.

June takes a steadying breath and grabs Shimmer from the backseat. She cinches the golden chains of the cloak and pulls the hood up.

_Superman gets a spandex jumpsuit and a cape. Superwoman has some kind of space-age armor and a laser sword. Batman has a suit with ceramic molded muscles and with a grappling hook. Hawkgirl has a mace and armor for both her and her feathers._

_I have blue jeans, a tank top and a flesh-eating cloak…_

June draws herself up straight and locks the car behind her. She leaves the AC on. They haven't recharged the Telsa's batteries in months but it runs like a dream. No one's cell phone ever dies, either. Perks of having Natasha as her room-mate.

Raven is at the edge of the crowd, right beside the driveway. She's dressed for work, her feathered cloak over her shoulders with it's crimson collar of blood-dipped eagle feathers haloing her pale face. She wears a set of black claws on the fingers of her left hand, the wrought iron tied together with a network of chains.

Enchantress whispers in June's ear, something about the dark magic gathered on the metal, something that sounds more than a little turned on.

Natasha is leaning against the front door. She too is suited up, the metal and circuitry that makes her Cyborg is covering most of her skin in a checkerboard of triangular plates. Underneath the plates part of her T-Shirt is still visible although now it only reads.

 **Bla**... **ves**... **tter**

A stack of scrap metal and what looks like junked cars is at the far end of the lot and a swarm of spider-like robots are tearing it apart, welding it into something else.

Four of the protestors break off and head straight for June.

"Choose life, sister!"

"Your baby loves you!"

"You have options!"

June squares her shoulders and gets ready to push them aside. They've gotten bold lately. Rather than walking back and jabbering at her, they make her shoulder them aside. This is beyond what they're allowed to do...their right to complain doesn't mean she should have to push them out of her way on a public sidewalk.

Natasha started keeping donuts, pizza and soft drinks on hand for the cops after the third day in a row she had to call them.

_If you like, I could rip their guts out through their noses. Or I can make that one fuck the pastor in the ass until both die of exhaustion. This one...this one has secrets, June._

_No thank you, Enchantress. We won't be murdering today._

_Pity. If you see any doe-eyed, gullible virgins, they belong to me._

June groans.

_Not all virgin sacrifices require a knife to the heart, my gullible friend. Do you think they would feel more pleasure living their lives with these vermin? Squeezing out a dozen children and getting beaten whenever they're not pregnant?_

The worst days are the ones where Enchantress is right. Half of the families here have more than eight kids, as best as June can tell. The older the girls are and the closer they are to puberty, the more haunted their eyes.

June tries to step around them only to be blocked again by a man in a plaid shirt with huge shoulders and sunburn on his neck and on his forearms.

"I can't let you do this, young lady."

June lets her left hand relax and fists her right. She's a southpaw. The energy comes in through the right and she casts out through the left.

Thunder crashes, rattling every window on every car.

"Move."

"No," he declares, putting his hand on her shoulder. "Let the reverend show you a better way."

 _Such delicious things he remembers!_ Enchantress purrs. _Such embarrassing things!_

June sneers.

"Speaking of, might want to stock up on condoms, big guy. Won't be too long before the Reverend wants another booty call…" she teases.

The denial that flies out of his mouth means nothing, not with the blush in his cheeks and the terror in his eyes. His screaming about not being gay has drawn half the congregation's attention.

"Let...me...by," June snarls, feeling Enchantress's presence scratching at the back of her eyes.

He all but jumps out of her way. June strides past him and readies herself to push past the human chain across the driveway. Arms linked and legs planted, two dozen of these clowns are participating today, creating a wall of judgement and shame two people thick.

"Hey!" someone whispers.

"Yeah?"

"Can you walk me in?"

"Sure can."

A tiny girl with olive skin and straight, shiny hair crawls out from the bushes. She won't look June in the eye. Even with her tiny build, there's no way the girl is eighteen. No wonder she's so terrified.

"Thanks. My parents...if they..."

The blood drains from the girl's face.

"Come on," June offers, holding her cloak open.

"I'm just here for birth control, I swear."

June sighs.

"Kid, you can be here for whatever you need. Your bits belong to you. And that includes your lady bits."

"Eww."

"Yeah," June chuckles. "Grownups talking about sex is gross. Or it will be, when I'm a grownup."

"You're totally a grownup."

"Tell that to my bank account."

The girl snickers.

"Your cloak tickles."

Sure enough, Shimmer is clinging tight to the kid's cheek. A chorus of soft sucking noises suggests that he's taste-testing her skin.

_Hurt her, and I I will rip you apart thread by thread!_

_Enchantress would never allow it, mortal!_

_Enchantress dies if I do..._

_Very well...you owe me victims, mortal._

"It's alive," June whispers.

"What?"

"The cloak is cursed. I'm a witch. Well, not exactly.  An evil spirit lives inside me."

June nods towards Raven.

"She's a witch, too.  Like an actual witch.  Also her father is this evil demon.  She's the only one powerful enough to keep him back."

"Get out!"

"S'true. Once we get you inside, I'll show you."

June flicks her free hand at the driveway blockade. Belts dissolve into ash and zippers shatter and girdles and clips snap. Pants and skirts fall to the asphalt. The churchgoers scatter, covering their privates with hands and pamphlets and in one case, a garish hat covered in wax fruits.

"After you, kid."

The girl sprints to the door where a nurse lets her in and locks it behind her.

June takes her place beside Raven.

"Shall we?"

Raven smiles, revealing a canine tooth just slightly too long and too sharp. A gust of wind lifts her from the grass. A pillar of lightning forms under her, suspending her on power and Doc Martens. The clouds above them swirl and blacken. A bolt of lightning reaches down to raven's uplifted fist.

Three sizzling lines of flame emerge from her skin and as they fade to ash, three eyes open within the sigil, irises blood red and pupils gleaming.

"Followers of the false god!" Raven bellows. "Witness true power!"

The pastor turns and raises his Bible.

"Get behind me, Sa-"

The Bible he was brandishing bursts into flames in his hands.

"Come to me, Enchantress…" June whispers.

Enchantress rips her body away from her, hurling June's disembodied spirit into the sky.  She has scarcely started her work when the parishioners scatter in a cloud of screams and tears and leave behind only the smell of soiled underwear. One of the children is snared by a tentacle but Raven strikes the slimy appendage with a bolt of flame before it can sting.

With the street empty, Enchantress relaxes.

_Trigon's spawn beside me and the mortals fleeing me. My enemies where I can see them and my subjects cowering...as it should be._

Raven sinks to the ground and falls to her knees, coughing out what looks like three black marbles.

"It's getting worse," she groans. "He was inside me, this time."

"He is always within you, mortal. He should have broken through, this time. I saw his power--his true power--in your eyes."

"Way to boost a friend's spirits, Ju-"

Raven groans.

"Crap. June is not here right now. Coke?"

"What is...Coke?" Enchantress demands.

"It's black and sugary and it bubbles and it is and awful for your body."

"I see."

"Here ya go."

"What's the difference between a Coke and Natasha?"

"I do not know, mortal."

"Natasha is black and bubbly and sweet and she is  _good_ for your body," Raven teases.

Natasha's half-metal face splits in a grin.  A blush spreads on her skin and electricity crackles over her plating.

"Says the girl who can do a threeway just by astral projecting..."

* * *

###  **August 13, 2006 | Mari McCabe ("Vixen")**

Portland, Oregon

Elaine Saunders Apartment

 

As she mounts the stairs, Kendra's steps become slow and halting, like something scares her, here in her home. Mari's stomach knots. She slips into the red and channels a falcon, leaning on the bird for its superior reflexes and eyesight.

"Listen," Kendra whispers.

"Floorboards creaking."

"And?"

"And I know every way these boards creak. Someone is up there."

Kendra summons her mace and grips the handle. Mari stacks up behind her girlfriend, her grandmother's witch-knife poised for a quick slash with her right hand and a short length of chain in the other--courtesy of shit-hole neighborhoods in Detroit--as animal instinct and all-too-human rage simmer in her brain.

The door swings open with a tiny creak. A scrawny kid in flannel and a stocking cap dives behind the bed.

"Aah! Don't hurt me!"

"Who are you?"

"Mason."

"All right, Mason. Why are you here?"

"Um."

"Do better than 'um'."

"Because my mom kicked me out and the shelters won't take me. So I have to break in to houses. I mean, you're part of the Justice League, so I figured it was safer here than in the burbs, I mean, in the burbs some asshole would shoot me for going through his backyard but...you're a hero, you don't kill people."

"...do you?"

Mari's twitching fingers return the witch-knife to its sheath.

"Out where we can see you," she tells the kid.

"Yeah, sorry."

Mason is not gaunt but he's still all legs and bones, like a full-size skeleton that doesn't have enough skin, sinew and fat to properly decorate it. Scrapes from a razor cover his--or her?--neck and chin, crimson lipstick, plucked lashes and violet eyeshadow frame the face. Burglary tools and a revolver are spread out on the bed, all of it on top of some sort of thin tarp.

"Are you transitioning?" Kendra asks.

"Yeah."

Kendra pats the far side of the bed and Mason curls up on it.

"That's hard work."

Mason's mouth twitches.

"It was. When I could get to the doctor. I wrote down the hormone treatments and dosages and..." they sigh. "I grabbed as much cash as I could before mom threw me out and filled all the prescriptions. When they ran out, I started robbing pharmacies for clean needles and more vials."

They sniff.

"It won't matter. I was supposed to go from suppressing hormones to estrogen next year. That'll never happen."

"Your parents threw you out?" Mari asks.

"It was just me and mom. Yeah."

Hardly any air moved when Mason spoke. They're so scared that a shiver travels up and down their arm despite the heat and humidity of August.

"If you don't mind my asking, was your mother approving the treatments?"

"No," Mason moans. "My uncle. He moved away. He thought it would be fine. Lawyer drew up some papers so that I could keep going. Mom tore them up right in front of me."

Kendra extends a wing and tickles Mason's cheek.

"Hey."

"Look at me," she demands. "We'll make this better. Babe?"

Mari pulls out her phone.

 

> **Fuzzball:** Need to get on the list for a vetted foster family, immediate therapist contact and a MTF specialist team for a homeless teenager.
> 
> **PRISM:** Automated systems not capable of directing these needs. Lighthouse relaying request to appropriate rotation.
> 
> **Monocle:** Miss McCabe, how lovely to hear from you. Cass sends her regards.

A picture of Cassandra Cain at a science fair flicks onto her phone screen. She's holding aloft a first-place trophy and her project looks like it had something to do with honeybees and communicating via dance.

_That's my Cass._

Mari sniffs, wiping her tear and sweat-covered cheek on her hand.

 

> **Monocle:** One moment. Let me look through my files.
> 
> **Fuzzball:** Of course, Alfred.
> 
> **Monocle** : I have some options. I'll pass them to Kate to weed out any 'starched shirts'.

Mari laughs.

_Says the man whose guest house hand towels put Buckingham Palace to shame._

"I've got someone on it."

"On what?" Mason asks.

"We're looking for a foster family, a therapist and a transition doctor for you."

"But...but...I broke into your house! You're not mad at me?"

"I'm _enraged,_ kid," Kendra hisses. "This is my home, this is my room. It's private. Thousand other bedrooms you could have squatted in. That doesn't mean I'm going to treat you like you're less than human."

"Can I look around," Mari asks.

"Why we're here, baby."

Kendra's childhood bedroom feels too ordinary. Tulip pink comforter, cream sheets, posters on the wall in layers. Deep, deep in the dim mists of preteen years, Mari's eyes catch the faded image of a boy band. Layered above that are a quilt of classic rock and Che Guevara and Margaret Sanger and on the newest layer is a spoof certificate on the wall that reads 'Federal Boob Inspector'. That one probably happened after she came out.

"So this is where the magic happened?" Mari teases.

"Yeah. Pretty boring stuff."

Mason rolls their eyes.

"Um, your room is _not_ boring. I've never been somewhere cooler."

"What's your favorite?"

Mason points up at some puffy stickers.

"Those."

Kendra's wing reaches out and the bony leading edge taps the light switch. In the darkened room, the glow-in-the-dark plastic shines with a spooky greenish light.

"Thanagar's Four Virtues and the incantation of Horus and Isis I used to read to the pharaohs during the flood season. Always helped me sleep," Kendra sighs.

"So the weird hair guy is right? Aliens built the pyramids?"

"Nah. They were already here when my first life began. I was just an illegal immigrant, stealing jobs from local high priestesses."

"Were the girls cute?" Mari teases.

"Probably. I remember only pieces of each life, like the smell of food or the way I felt after a festival. The more lives I have, the smaller each piece seems."

"Good thing we got Savage then," Mari jokes. "I don't want to end up married to a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle."

Kendra sighs.

"I'm looking forward to not reincarnating for a _long_ time."

Alfred calls back an hour later with a long list of names, emails and phone numbers.

"Did you get it?" Kendra asks.

"Batman did."

"No way!" Mason scoffs. "Wait! Why does he know where to find a doctor for a trans kid?"

"He knew someone who knew who to call. He actually knows a lot about helping runaway kids."

"Oh, yeah. That makes sense. That's basically Robin's story, isn't it?. Do I have to fight clowns or penguins? Penguin clowns? That's really where I draw the line."

"So you can handle one or the other but not mixed?"

"Yeah. Exactly!"

Kendra stares at Mason before losing the battle to keep a straight face. She laughs herself right off the edge of the bed.

Kate vetoed, one because of something Batwoman saw in a back alley and one because of a horror story a child in the youth group told her. The various QAGGA (Queer Allies of Greater Gotham Area) chapters have unknowingly pulled out plastic chairs for the civilian identities of Batgirl, Red Hood, Huntress, Beast Boy, the Question and in one hilarious case, a heavily glamoured Zatanna who impersonated a 76-year old Mexican grandmother chaperoning her daughter. Kate started the tradition to pay back for her own teenage years but since then every single Bat has taken part. Kendra stops at a meeting whenever she is in Gotham.

Mari has no doubt that somewhere the hills around in Gotham, those children's tormentors share unmarked, unremembered and unlamented graves.

Kendra's hand in hers anchors Mari, making the unreal day feel more like a crazy adventure than a reason to question her sanity.

In the last hour, the trio have hit a methadone clinic, a food pantry, a clothing charity and are now standing in line at the Planned Parenthood clinic where they can get Mason tested.

The hormone injections came with enough needles for the thirty day supply, not the seven months since then. Seven months in which five pharmacies have been hit by overnight burglaries that the police have not been able to get traction on. The only things the pharmacies did not carry is the peculiar gauge of needles and syringes needed.

"You should have told us you were low on needles, Mason."

"It's not a normal thing to say," they grumble. "I did everything I could. Used a blowtorch to sterilize them."

"Mostly sterilize," Kendra scolds. "Some of the sites are pretty raw."

"Yeah. That's more because they melted and got crooked. Hurt."

"It's funny…" Kendra muses. "I've never been to Planned Parenthood except as a member of the Justice League. _After_ something bad happened."

"If it'd make you feel better, I could throw a rock at the sign."

Kendra rolls her eyes.

"I'm good."

"You're done with crime, right?" Mari demands. "I'm going out on a limb here."

"Yes, ma'am."

Mason cased each one and memorized camera placements. They wore gloves and spray painted every door knob and surface they touched. They stole other medications--those more typical of smash and grabs--and dumped on to the local gangs for a fraction of what they were worth. The Portland Police Department has no idea that one ninety-pound child has eluded them for half a year in a crime spree arranged to conceal the pursuit of their meds, dry ice and coolers. After a brief squabble with Superman, Mari got permission to clear the trail. The police department has been pointed at some extremely plausible--and extremely wrong--clues that should lead them to a dead end chasing a defunct Intergang cell out of Spokane.

 _Mason is going to do great things,_ Mari realizes. _The effort and planning they put into getting their treatments is impressive. The SAT is a cakewalk in comparison._

Kendra hip-checks Mari.

"While we're here, babe, we should get our checkups."

"Really?"

Kendra glances at Mason.

"I think they're worse than they look."

"Yeah," Mari sighs. "Wouldn't hurt to have strength in numbers."

The receptionist waves them up in the nick of time.

Mari has a rule about never reading _National Geographic_ in waiting rooms. Too terrifying to consider the possibility that she may have been inhabiting the animals body when the photographer showed up. To each her hangup.

"Name?"

"Vixen."

The receptionist is a twenty-something biracial girl with a thin frame and a face made of fine bones and sharp lines. She looks up, eyebrow peaked in disbelief.

Mari holds up her badge with the Justice League credentials.

"And you're here for a checkup?"

"You do take superheroes, right?"

"Sister, we take everybody."

 

 


	27. OVER THE WIRE: Breaking News From CatCo WorldWide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "OVER THE WIRE" is a series of sound bites from news broadcasts or political speeches, covering other events around the world over a period of time.
> 
> This installment covers August 19 and 20, 2006.

 

 

###  **August 19, 2006 | Maggie Sawyer**

National City, California 

National City Police Department, Central Station (Precinct 18)

Floor Six, Serious Crimes / Vice / Homicide

 

Pushing aside the ruins of Jack's desk, Maggie keeps the oxygen mask clamped tight. She keeps one finger on the valve.

_Can't waste any._

The overhead sprinklers gush, slicking the floor, mixing blood and ash and printer ink and water from the cooler into one filthy gray slop.

Precinct 18 is dying, the building's structure gradually buckling. Whatever the bomb was, it was well placed and it was powerful.

Ten paces to go to get to the lockup. Moving in the armored suit Kara gave her is like dragging a truck -- time to hit the gym -- but it's safer than strolling through mangled steel in her civvies.

One.

Two.

Three.

The building shudders and the floor behind her gives way, swallowing Maggie's desk, the vending machine and half the break area. Her radio hisses.

"This is Sawyer."'

"Sawyer, get the fuck out of there. That's an order."

"Lockup's not empty, sarge."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" he growls.

"Lockup is full, four souls. They're trapped. I'm walking them out."

"They're criminals."

_Yeah. Misdemeanours and fines. Not the death penalty._

"Fuck off, boss."

Maggie tosses the radio on the desk, pulls her pistol and shoots it three times. Circuits meant for a AA battery are struck with a thunderstorm's worth of voltage. The casing peels back like a banana and melted circuits ooze onto the floor.

[Flannel, where the hell is Kara?]

[FBI Headquarters. It also exploded. As did three CIA stations and two army bases in California alone.]

[Fuck.]

[Fuck would be an understatement, Maggie.]

The transmat beacons Kara gave her are low on charge -- her fault -- but hopefully they can get the suspects to the parking lot.

Maggie grabs the handle for the door and turns it. Nothing. She kicks the door. Nothing.

"Fuck!"

[Recommend railgun shot, soft load, tight spread. One half-percent power.]

"Here goes."

Maggie lines up on the door's hinges, adjusting the weapon so that the pellets only hit a narrow area. With the hinges blown off, the door surrenders on the fourth kick.

Two drunk-as-fuck thessies are snuggling in one of the interrogation rooms. Public indecency...which may well be an honest mistake. Apparently their former home did not have laws against sex in public and they hadn't asked in their first week of Earth life. It wouldn't be information their new neighbors would volunteer.

A pair of Green Martians, male and female, kneel in the center of the other room, hands pressed together.

Maggie aims high, shattering both windows in quick succession.

"Take one of these!" she bellows, throwing the beacons at their feet.

"When we get outside, get on the ground. Hands behind your head. Stay calm."

Before she hits her own beacon, she presses the cloak button on her railgun. No sense going to federal prison for getting caught with that.

 

 

Maggie drags herself to her feet in the parking lot and leans against a fire truck. Her sergeant stomps toward her with murder in his eyes.

"I gave you a direct order, Sawyer!"

She sighs.

"Why yes, sir. Me and the aliens are all safe and sound. Thank you for asking. "

"You think I fucking care?" he rages.

"I think you will fucking _thank me_ when you don't have to explain dead perps in our custody."

He just stands there, huffing and red-faced.

"Hitchcock!" Maggie bellows.

She pats the duffel slung over her shoulder.

"Saved your turtle!"

"Hell Yeah!" the massive ginger laughs.

On the sidewalk, transmat flashes by the dozens appear in neat rows. What look like soldiers appear at the doorstep of the ravaged precinct. Raxxies with warpaint staining the sticky skin of their biosuits. Thessalians in kinetic weave catsuits with quantum batons and heavy pistols form two columns four dozen deep. A dozen K'Hunds, older and grayer than she's used to seeing, all carrying shock-staffs.

"The fuck is that?" Maggie murmurs.

She makes her way over to them as her coworkers walk beside her and shamelessly paw through the duffel, hoping some trinket of theirs survived.

Maggie squares off with the tallest, grayest-skinned K'Hund. A female, if she's not mistaken. Pushing nine feet tall and probably close to a half ton with a few laugh lines around her mouth and a crude amulet of scrap metal around her neck.

"Do you speak English?"

"Why? Would you like me to?" the matriarch jokes.

"Couldn't hurt."

"Why are you here?"

"You're short on soldiers, the city is panicking and you barely have the men to deal with your wounded. Every one you see here is a soldier. A veteran," she explains, gesturing not only to her group but the raxxies and thessies on either side.

"We can help. We can enforce your laws, under your command."

Maggie wants to jump up and kiss this gal but she's got no chance of reaching.

"Wait here," she asks. "I'll go tell my boss."

_Sergeant is gonna fucking love this._

 

* * *

 

###  **August 19, 2006 | Communications Beacon**

Sun-Saturn Lagrange Point 3

600 million miles from the sun

 

A recording streams into the beacon's quantum uplink. Computers translate it, rearranging the sound so that the English oration and emotional cues carry to Armalinu, Rak, Kinte, Paah, Coluan Tridecimal and the other languages of the founding worlds.

Then the probe fires its thrusters, aligning its antennas with the nearest faster-than-light communications platforms.

"This is Kara Zor-El, Lady of House El, head of the Republican Council. The capital world of the Republic -- Earth -- has been attacked by rebels. Terrorists who struck police forces and armies to clear a path for their slaughter. Thousands are dead, natives and Unity species both. Law enforcement here cannot contain this technology or this threat. Earth is young and while she has great potential, this is beyond her."

"I hereby invoke the Treaty of Colu Prime, Articles I, II, V and XI."

"Citizens of the galaxy, I call on you to honor your alliances to Krypton and to galactic peace."

"Davarr. Starhaven. Majoi. Rak Prime. The Veriga Drift. Our fore-bearers died on those battlefields, Kryptonian and Thessalian and Rakni-Xinda and Helgamitte and Pahiiki and Coluan...and together we showed tyrants and butchers that this galaxy belongs to the free!"

"I ask that we fight together once again.  May our gods give us courage."

An hour passes before the first replies are received.

 

 

> **This is Armali High Command. The Third is en route, with the Passionate Blade at the head. All irregular forces suited for quick response have been dispatched. We will destroy our enemies as we always have before.  Krypton and Armali, allies eternal.**
> 
> **The Warrior's Caste has heard your call, Councilor. A flotilla of skirmishers and carriers have been dispatched from the Proxima drift.  For the hive!**
> 
> **Colu Prime acknowledges receipt. The Unwavering will set course for Earth, escorting a relief fleet along with the Insightful Obedience counter-insurgency group. Stand by for identification transponders.**
> 
> **The Rakni-Xinda are with you, Councilor. We will fight for the glory of our bloodlines and the prosperity of our offspring!**

 

Six hundred million miles away, Kara staggers out of a ruined building, broken, crying and soaked in soot the blood of people she could not save. She glances at the notices inside her helmet.

"Thank you," she whispers.

 

* * *

 

###  **August 20, 2006 | Barack Obama**

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC

The "Lockbox", a bunker 800 feet below the Oval Office

 

"What am I seeing, general?"

The Superintendent of the Air Force looks up from his secured phone.

"Ships, sir. NORAD counts six hundred twenty three, more coming in by the hour. Big ones. Smallest signature we've got is over a hundred and fifty meters."

A skinny woman in a striking indigo pantsuit looks up from her laptop.  The pantsuit may well have been selected to distract attention from her close-shaved haircut which she has dyed bright purple.

"Problem is...the Air Force insists on using radar. It's like trying to shoot a jet fighter with a bow and arrow. Radar is shit past the upper exosphere and these guys are dropping in at the same orbital distance as the moon."

Obama turns.

"All right, then. Impress me."

"Thanks to our new friends, I can give you a picture, rather than a bunch of dots."

She takes over the projectors in the room, drawing a scowl from the Secret Service.

"Laser painting shows that it's closer to six thousand, Mr. President. Everything from battleships to shuttles, if I had to guess by shapes."

"Just waiting?"

She nods.

"Any communications?"

She taps at her keyboard.

"Repeating message. According to our new friend's phrasebooks, it's Galactic Standard. They're saying 'ready to assist' and addressing it to the Military Guild of Kryptonian Republic."

Obama pounds his fists on the table.

"Superwoman."

"What about her, sir?" Nia Nal whispers.  "She's never been a threat before."

A speechwriter isn't usually one of the people whisked into the nuke-proof bunker but the president has a tendency to get what he wants.

"I realize that.  I bet she has a good reason for doing this.  It's just…" Obama sighs. "...an alien fleet is amassing above Earth.  It looks bad, whether or not they're here to help."

Nia sighs.

"Kara doesn't make it easy, does she?"


	28. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. The Tea Will Be Sweetened.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":**  
>  Where Miss Zor-El goes to the United Nations, maps get penciled in, the noose tightens on Lillian, Russian mobsters make poor sexual partners, Lena needs a snuggle and Kara's tolerance for capitalism has its limits.
> 
>  **OUR NEXT EXCITING EPISODE:**  
>  Where Vasquez will crack some heads, Alex will make a hard call, stolen treasure will be located, sealed evil unsealed, Plan A will be a total dud, not all Trojan horses are horses, please check the password before flying, and it's a pirate's life for Lena.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHORS NOTE #1:**  
>  The idea of what counts as "a nation" is pretty fuzzy but it usually includes at least territory, borders, and recognition from others. So the nation of _Qyo-Esholo_ being established off the cost of Mexico requires some land sold by Mexico and recognition from other countries. 
> 
> **AUTHORS NOTE #2:**  
>  The idea of _'civis romanus sum'_ was that it Rome's reach was so broad and her army so well-known that reminding someone you were a Roman citizen also was an implied "do not fuck with me". We see this in the modern world with American government and warning other countries not to detain or harm its citizens. This is fitting because the United States is basically Rome now, in terms of how many troops they have and how widely distributed they are.
> 
>  
> 
>  **GLOSSARY:**  
>  "Action stations" -- Naval term indicating all crews are to go immediately to their posts and prepare for combat. Equivalent to "general quarters" or "battle stations".  
> "Condition one" -- Firearms safety term, indicating weapon is loaded, a round is chambered and the weapon is ready to fire. Used in this case to refer to the readying the ship-board weapons of the _Artemis_ and _Apollo_.  
> "Dustoff" -- Military term for medical evacuation flights. The callsign "DUSTOFF" is only used in reference to air ambulances and medical helicopters. May also be used more loosely to refer to a take-off point, as it is here.  
> HVT -- High Value Target  
> LZ -- Landing Zone
> 
>  **PLACES:**  
>  Mael'Thoran ("Sanctuary", Ajatkar) -- Kara's secret hideout on the coast of Mexico. Technically also the capital city of Qyu-Esholo.  
> Qyu-Esholo ("Place of Peace", Galactic Standard) -- Newly formed nation of aliens living on Earth, consisting of a few square miles and one small city sold off of Mexico and a series of artificial islands constructed within Sanctuary's defense perimeter.
> 
>  **CODENAMES:**  
>  "Fist team" -- assault team, led by Operative Danvers  
> "Hammer team" -- search and destroy, led by Operative Vasquez  
> "Mercy team" -- rescue and medical team led by Operative Reynolds  
> "Operation Nightingale's Claw" -- The mission to capture the Luthors and decommission their facility.
> 
>  **STYLE GUIDE:**  
>  " _Italics in quotes_ " are foreign languages.  
> " _< Brackets>_" in quotes and italics are passages translated from a foreign language. Some passages I will not translate.  
>  _Italics_ are thoughts or observations and always the POV character.  
> [Brackets] are interactions with artificial intelligence and cybernetics, verbal or non-verbal.  
>  **Bold and prefixed lines** are text messages (example--KDKapow: is Kara's main handle)  
>   
>  **Bold and block-quoted lines** are recorded messages, radio communications, songs or poems, etc.  
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Bold text between horizontal lines indicates notes, emails or or writing.**
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> **REFERENCE GUIDE:**  
>  Please see "For Your Eyes Only" in CODEX for DEO personnel, roles and codenames.  
> Please see "Coursework for a Minor In Alien Studies" in CODEX for information on alien races in the multiverse.  
> Please see "Kryptowiki: Cast and Crew" for a list of all characters. (upcoming)  
> Please see "Kryptowiki: Mechanical's Handbook" for a breakdown of key gear and ships.  
>   
> 

###  ** August 21, 2006 | Alex Danvers **

New York, New York

United Nations Headquarters

 

(9:00am New York Time / 2:00pm London Time / 4:00pm Moscow / 9:00pm Beijing)

 

Alex runs the scanner up the ambassador's left side one last time. Her blood sizzles in her ears. She hopes Vasquez gave that cop a thorough, Fort Benning skull-fuck for that comment.

_Why the fuck would the NYPD have racist cops on duty here? How stupid are they?_

If her sister wants to be invited by an ambassador who looks like her, that's her prerogative. Fuck that cop.

"You're clean, ma'am."

Demos holds out the plate with the security badge. The ambassador takes it, pinning it to her chest.

"I'm going to activate this now," Alex warns her.

"Vivianne Wade, Ambassador for the Republic of Senegal," the badge declares. "Biometrics identified. Defense system assigned."

A drone peels off the swarm overhead and takes up position behind the ambassador, staying close to her shoulder and angled so that it can project a defense screen before a bullet can traverse the distance from barrel to skin.

" _Mercí_."  <"thank you" | French>

 _"Bienvenue dans le futur,"_ Alex replies.  <"Welcome to the future" | French>

The ambassador's fleeting smirk forces a smile to Alex's face.

"You speak French?"

"Yes."

"School?" she asks.

Alex shakes her head.

"Military training. It wasn't one of the languages the army wanted me to learn but as it happened, I was right. Spoken all over the world...which is where I usually work."

The ambassador's smile vanishes.

"Yes, well, those of us in countries that _get bombed_ are glad you learned a language at least."

Alex claps her mouth shut before she can protest. Demos rescues her, indicating the front of the chamber.

"We've moved your seat to the front row."

"Oh?"

"And when did Senegal become a nation of great affairs?"

"When you befriended her. When power stopped looking like I do," Alex sighs. "And started looking like _she does._ "

Kara is standing beside the Secretary General's podium, chatting with four ambassadors, moving between English, Spanish, Russian and a language Alex doesn't recognize. She towers over the podium, hands folded over her Councilor's robes. One of the ambassadors is a petite blonde woman, probably thirty years younger than every other diplomat here. Unless Alex has been doing gayness wrong, that woman's wide eyed awe is more than _respect_ for Kara.

The robes are as amazing as she teased Alex: a shimmering weave of fiber optic circuitry, protective composite and slivers of synthesized Aqyte crystal. The fabric is sleek but stiff. It's high-collared and on the collar's outer rim hang various accolades for Krypton and its allies. The Seal of the Republic of Krypton spans Kara's whole chest and the Sigil of House El is one of many, albeit embroidered in crimson thread.

A platinum brooch centered on a stone of _true_ Aqyte sits on the neckline.  Perhaps the last such stone in existence. The cloudy indigo Aqyte blazes like a neon sign as its structure is excited by lights absorbed from the the fixtures above. 

It was Kara's grandmother's, on her mother's side. Nimda Ina-Zenn was the first Great House member to refuse a marriage in centuries and if Kara is to be believed, it is because she wanted to focus on nieces, nephews, grandchildren.

 Kara didn't even realize she had it until she went through her luggage from the pod again.

The chamber seethes with anticipation. Every diplomat from every nation knows the symbol Superman wears. Applause could be heard around the hall when Kara came out.

Some nations welcome Superman, celebrate him, the leaders break bread with him. The people he helps shower Kal with food and drink for even the slightest assistance.

More than a few nations treat him as a nuisance at best, something they would kill if they could. The people of those nations tend to be just as quick to offer a meal for a rescued child or repaired home, regardless of the secret police's opinions.

Kal has always avoided the spotlight at places like this.

Now a woman stands here, dark-skinned and regal, wearing his symbol and declaring herself his equal, even his superior. Superior not only to human men but to Superman.

The secretary general session calls the assembly to order and offers the floor to Senegal.

Vivianne stands up, nods at Kara, and speaks.

"The Republic of Senegal welcomes our friends from the stars. We welcome the nation of _Qyu-Esholo_ to Earth. In consultation with the Republic of Mexico, we recognize its borders, its government and its place in this hall. We extend an invitation for an embassy in Dakar and request an embassy in _Mael'thoran_."

 _That little shit coached her,_ Alex realizes. Unless the Ambassador has done immersion courses on Starhaven or summered in the Plains of Ajat before Krypton exploded, it's unlikely she mastered those words on her own.

"Senegal yields the floor."

The tiny blonde who had been fawning over Kara signals for attention, having not made it back to her seat yet.

"Estonia seconds the motion to recognize _Qyu-Esholo_."

Chaos erupts.

 

* * *

 

###  ** August 21, 2006 | Kara Danvers **

New York, New York

Fifth Avenue

 

Lena snuggles close to Kara, fingers curled tight in her robes. Her breathing is ragged and her face tomato red. Four crescent-shaped wounds on each palm show what it took for her to keep her composure long enough for Kara to open the limo door.

"Eleven thousand and seventeen dead," Lena whispers. "Thirty one thousand, eight hundred and six injured. Three hundred nine cities. Sixty two countries."

 _Rao's mercy,_ Kara thinks. _She doesn't deserve this._

"Lena, stop!" Kara snaps.

"People died," Lena moans.

"It's not your fault, Lee."

"Isn't it?" Lena croaks. "Who else was going to stop them?"

Kara sighs.

"Your family is amazing, Lee. I mean, they made _you_. And I will admit that the Luthors think differently than most humans I've met...but that doesn't make it your fault or your sole responsibility to help catch your mother."

"And brother," Lena grumbles. "Fuck! I believed him, Kara!"

"Yeah, I'm still on the fence about that. It doesn't fit…"

"He was toying with me," Lena groans.

"Maybe. But he came in from the cold, confessed to some felonies. And then breaks out? A mastermind would just have stayed out. Have another couple of months for the master plan. The chances they'd get him to court were low before you talked him into it. Reserving judgement on that one."

"You're entirely too sweet," Lena complains.

"The breakout was messy, too. Eleven guards dead and a wall blown open? Brute force. People sneak and tunnel and smuggle their way out of prisons every day."

Lena seems unconvinced, so Kara presses on.

"Wouldn't it be more classic Lex to have picked the lock on his cell with a chopstick, which was only there because his cellmate's aunt ran a Chinese restaurant but _she_ only knew about Lex because he got her tickets to the opera, so she sent him some take-out. He also made sure to get some tickets for certain guards, the only ones who would have had a chance of catching him? They would go look for him at the opera but it would be held indoors because of rain, which there was a ninety percent chance of that day, not fifteen, at least assuming you used the more reputable farmer's almanac...and only a series of coded clues in the program told his driver where to find him?"

Lena sighs.

"Also that remote control wristwatch would be involved somehow. The signal would be Wagner's _Ride of the Valkyries_ and the whole thing would be set up to be pinned on me and President Obama in the same fell swoop."

Kara's phone rings.

[Kolex?]

[A call from one of the subjects of Project Rubber Guillotine.]

[Fine.]

"Sorry, Lena. I have to take this."

"S'okay." Lena taps something on her phone, rolling the divider down. "Driver?"

One of her bodyguard robots is there--Jackie--disguised as a ginger-stubbled hipster. So far, three bike messengers gave him the eye. Two were female.  One flashed her nipple ring.

"Yes?"

"Circle. Don't stop until I ask you to."

Kara kisses Lena's forehead.

"Thanks. Kolex, connect call."

"This is Jeff. I was told to call you, Miss...Danvers, is it?"

[Kolex, ready an assault, capture, rendition profile on Jeff Bezos, his C-Suite personnel, and any security infrastructure he has.  Prepare a computer virus to wipe his servers and assign a Tier Three for brute force decryption.  Distribute it to the Momento Mori and have them wait for orders.]

"My name is Kara Zor-El. I would keep that in mind."

[Profile computed, Kara. Eleven teams ready to deploy, five reserve. Probability of human casualties is 0.0023% if executed on current information. Orders?]

[Hold.]

"Uh, all right. So, why are you calling?"

 _That's right...he thinks he's in charge here,_ Kara thinks.

She chuckles and Lena snuggles closer.

"A warning between gentlemen, let's say. Same I gave to Elon Musk. Blue Mountain is a dead end, Jeff. I'll be happy to absorb any relevant engineers but you've been leapfrogged."

Jeff laughs.

"Listen," Kara sighs. "Jeffy. Can I call you Jeffy? You are running a distant second to Elon as it is. NASA has just received sixty-eight plasma thruster arrays and fusion cores for the same, three thousand metric tons of hull composite, half of it prefabbed and over a hundred gravity field generators. Four system-range freighters and one general purpose rig. We gave the same to the Chinese, Indian, Russian and European programs."

"Am I to believe that means something? The government got out of space because it was expensive and boring. Plus they were bad at it."

Kara has been here before. She had to watch her mother argue with a Helgrammite medical-robot salesman for two Kryptonian days before he got the hint that he would not be making a sale and that his lawsuit for access to the public healthcare system would not last long enough to reach the High Court's docket.

Jeff sounds just like Py'kar did: so used to being better than the alternative that he can't adjust to not even being an option.

Lena taps Kara's shoulder.

"Speakerphone," she whispers.

Kara shrugs.

"Mr. Bezos," Lena begins.

It's a tone of voice Kara has never heard her use on anyone before and one she hopes never to provoke...her words are pure steel, tempered in an oven fired by every leering coworker and sneering professor Lena endured.

_Lillian is so fucked._

"L-Corp is running a project currently for a pair of permanent Martian settlements in the next fifteen years. We have reached the details and paint jobs stage."

"We have plans for that."

"Oh? Where are you with FTL?"

Something clatters on the other end of the line. Kara hears him swearing at himself for spilling coffee on his shirt. Perk of being able to hear so well. His hand over the phone didn't mean a thing to her ears.

"With what?"

"You heard me the first time," Lena replies. "Faster than light. L-Corp did a test-firing of an Albecurrie bottle system last week. We achieved a 170% disruption of gravity in a three meter area for two minutes."

"So private space travel is out, unless it's your girlfriend?" Jeff snaps.

"No, it's out if it surpasses the public sphere in space and space colonization and unless it's someone I trust. Someone who doesn't dig out my family history and drop it on me just to try and threa-"

"She already had that! She's Lex Luthor's sister!"

The shriek of torn metal rings over the call as Kara's fist clenches, crumpling the armrest's leather, the wood and then the steel of the car's frame.

"She is. And she's done nothing since I met her but try and improve her company and herself as a corporate citizen and as a person. She's running the Mars program at a loss."

"You listen closely, Jeffie. You will forget that I am named Danvers. You will never insult Lena again and if I get so much as a whiff of disobedience on either of those, I will fast track a cross-contenential transit system and in-home manufacturing for cost of materials. This could be your last fiscal year, or I could give you a decade to sort yourself out. Amazon has exactly as long to rediscover itself as I allow it. Remember that."

"Do you understand?"

Kara hears nothing.

"Hello?"

"He terminated the call, Lady Kara."

Lena sighs.

"You scare me, sometimes."

"Really?"

"Yes. I suppose it's because I was raised a businessman's daughter but trained as an engineer. I know that you can do what you're talking about but my first instinct--the first thing I see--is myself living under a cardboard box."

"Never," Kara promises.

"Never?"

"Never...but you _would_ be the sexiest hobo ever."

Lena tries to nip Kara.

"Ow! Fuck! Help me," she mumbles.

Kara looks down to see Lena's teeth are dug into her robes.

"Babe....were you trying to bite my boob?"

Lena blushes.

"I wasn't going to hurt it…" she whines as best she can with her incisors wedged in the robe's alloy and crystalline threads.  "Stupid clothes."

"Hold still, Lee."

[Kolex, reverse the current flow on the robes. Soft as you can make them.]

[Thirty seconds.]

Kara passes the time by petting Lena's hair like she were a cat while green eyes blaze at her and Lena huffs angrily.

"Now you can let go, babe."

Lena taps on the window and Jackie rolls it down.

"Take us home, please."

 

* * *

 

###  **August 23, 2006 | Barack Obama**

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC

 

The steward places the teacup in front of Kara, disappearing before she can make eye contact, moving with decades of practice at being helpful without being seen.

"Thank you, whoever!" Kara hollers at the doorway.

"I think the staff is still adjusting," Obama sighs. "Usually the first family…" he trails off.

"Doesn't look like us?" Kara offers. "I'm still getting my head around acting black and I've been here for a long while now."

"Acting black?" Obama asks, sipping his coffee.

"Krypton was far, far, far from perfect but my skin color was the marker of my privilege, particularly with the hair. It meant I was an Ina-Zenn girl and that meant I was somebody. And yet don't I look much like my cousin and that's a closer blood relationship than most human cousins have."

"I look positively pale compared to most members of House Kann. Skinnier, too. People would give them space on the sidewalk, not because they're bigger and blacker but because they dominated the Military Guild. It was all about names. Anyone with one was practically royalty. Anyone without one, didn't matter their color...they were nobody special."

She lifts the cup and sips.

_Nice oolong but there's something else. No...can it be?_

Kara moans...she can't help it. This is the same insistent, almost painful sweetness of her grandmother's tea, the family recipe. Scientifically unproven but spiritually essential cures for any disease on Krypton. The one she taught Kara to make when Kara was quarantined with a stubborn Farovian flu. Kara never dreamed she'd taste it again.

"Oh, my god...that's not honey. Twellian seed jam. I'll bite...where did you get it?

Obama smiles.

"After your broadcast last year, people in the National Institutes of Science started looking over samples they had on ice. When I took office, we stepped that up.  We've made some finds."

"But that's to be expected," he shrugs. "Every reason to suspect past visits. Your family knew Earth was here, after all."

Kara swallows.

"There were colonies long before I came. Centuries. There's...a list of invasive species I should send you. Things that sloppy freighter captains might have left behind.  Let's not have Earth become Space Australia where frogs and rats eat all the native animals.  The DEO already has it but the Park Service probably needs a copy."

"Not the DEO. The Space Force," he reminds her. "It may be boring but it's upfront. Something that can be on office buildings, not just on badges."

Kara groans.

"Can I just say that I hate you for that?  I thought my sister was proud of her service before. Well, now she's the first ever head of the sixth branch of the armed forces. No way her ego will fit inside the house this Thanksgiving."

She stares at the ceiling.

"You have daughters, you should have known better."

Obama chuckles.

"So, why I am I here?" Kara asks.

He sighs and crooks his fingers at a staffer waiting by one of the doors. Someone puts a fat packet of papers marked 'top secret' in front of Kara and a two-page letter beside it.

"The UN Security Council rejected your friend's offer. They did agree to share intelligence on a one-time basis. That printout is all the leads we have. I shouldn't be showing it to you, but in this case, I'm treating you as the head of a foreign government. Maybe something will jump out at you."

She starts flipping through the packet.

"Not my friends," Kara reminds him. "Not only that, at least. They were responding to mutual defense treaties they had with Krypton, treaties going way back. I would have done the same for them, if called on."

"Really? But if you're all that's left...what good is it for Krypton to assist them? No offense."

"None taken. The way we see it and also the way the treaties are written, is that Krypton is two things...a physical planet and the people originating from it, wherever they are. Equal in the eyes of the law. To attack one was to attack the other and to invite retribution."

" _Civis romanus sum,_ " Obama muses.  <"I am a roman citizen" | Latin >

Kara looks up from the packet.

"Yeah. The Republic's name still carries a lot of weight.  And since technically Earth is a Kryptonian world now, they were defending the homeworld of a founding species of the Galactic Unity. I sort of..."

Kara smiles.

"Borrowed the Earth for safekeeping."

She flips the pages of the packet in a blur and then drains the tea.

"Thanks for the tips. I'll see what I can get going at my end."

"You need some note paper or something?"

Kara pulls aside her blouse just enough for Kolex to project his interface.

"Photographic memory," she jokes. "Just know that if Luthor is hunkered down somewhere where the locals won't do anything, either you will do something, or I will. She's done."

Obama nods.

"Let's just hope we can do this the right way."

 

* * *

 

###  **August 23, 2006 | "Sergei" (not his real name)**

Moscow, Russia

 

Whistling the tune the beggar was playing, Sergei drops his keys in the basket by the door. Every light in the place is turned off and the heat is up high. Sweat is already beading on his forehead.

"Hello?" he calls out.

His laptop isn't on the table where he left it but a bright red thong is, sitting next to a half-finished champagne flute. Thumping music comes from the bedrooms.

"Fuck," he spits.

_If my idiot brother brought one of his whores here…_

Sergei reaches into his belt, curling his fingers around the Tokarev and flicking the safety off.

He tilts the door open partway and flicks the light on. He drops the gun. Something grabs it and suddenly the weapon is on the windowsill, clip released and ten bullets lined up neatly beside it. Scorched trails still sizzle on the carpet.

His wife is snoring on the bed with her legs spread wide and her nightgown in tatters. Between her legs and apparently passed out, is his mistress. Laying beside them both is a huge man with dark green skin, all-black eyes and four arms. He is asleep and he too is naked, his spent cock shiny with the women's juice and flopping halfway to his knee.

"Tsk-tsk-tsk," purrs a female voice. "We wouldn't want to hurt these beauties, would we?"

She grabs his arm, wrenching it behind his back and slamming him into a mirror.

"Who are you?" he growls.

"Who am I?" she laughs. "I'm someone who fucked harder in thirty minutes than you did this year. Though I must admit, lovely specimens. Even I needed help."

In the mirror, he sees the female version of the intruder on the bed: mint green skin, slightly damp like a frog's, four arms and giant black marbles for eyes.

"You've been a bad boy, Sergei. You've been doing business with the wrong woman. You're going to give me your wallet IDs for all of your crypto accounts and the password to your laptop...and I'm going to take one of them with me. Just to make sure you cooperate."

She laughs in his ear.

"Which should I take? Your wife? Or the one you actually want to fuck?"

 

* * *

###  **August 28, 2006 | Lillian Luthor**

Northwest Iran

LuthorCorp Mineral Facility

 

Lillian peers into the darkened lab.

"Lex," she snaps. "You will not disgrace yourself like this!"

His head is down on the workbench beside part of the left arm for his warsuit. Screws and clips are scattered all over the static-protected surface. Lex laughs.

"Disgrace myself, mother? How?" he groans. "By sleeping? I'm exhausted."

"Or do you mean by say, murdering a dozen men to break myself out of prison? Kudos, by the way. However ham handed your plan was, at least it was one they'll blame on me."

"Your sympathy for Lena has made you weak," Lillian scoffs. "You should have escaped ages ago, using your own resources.

"Perhaps," Lex admits. "It doesn't matter. The game is changed."

"Of course it matters, my son! We will not win this war if you skulk about with your tail between your legs. If Clark Kent could see you now…"

Lex's fists close.

"A pretty picture for him, I'm sure. But it's not him I'm worried about. Him, I could handle. He's just a boy from Kansas."

Lillian laughs.

"Superwoman? You're more afraid of her?"

"It's not funny, mother. And yes, I am."

He is twirling a stained shard of glass or acrylic between his fingers. Part of the war-suit's faceplate, probably.

"So some kinds of vermin come with tits. She'll die, just the same."

"How much Kryptonite do we have on hand, mother?"

"Five hundred pounds unrefined. Six refined."

He looks back at the shard.

"Refine and aresolize it. It's the only chance."

"You don't give me commands, Lex!"

"Then you can die fighting her, mother. Alone."

He tosses the chip at her feet.

"That broke of her helmet in Metropolis, towards the end. Some gas made it inside the suit. I did the math...she took hundreds of pounds of Kryptonite bullets and shrapnel without a scratch. When the gas infiltrated her helmet, she slowed down. Twelve percent reduction in movement speed over the nine seconds after exposure, then it plateaued. It was making her sick...slowly...but it was working. Let's say her helmet had 200ccs of space for air. That takes say, half a pound of refined ore to produce? We need gas. Kryptonite gas and a room to trap her in."

"That's impossible, Lex. That much would have killed Superman."

"It would have  _liquefied him!"_ Lex roars.

"That's what I'm saying. When she told you she's enhanced somehow?  Weaponized? She's telling the truth. This is the only weakness we've seen and after what we saw in Africa? I'm not inclined to poke randomly at her and hope to discover another one."

 

* * *

 

##  **BONUS SCENE**

* * *

###  **September 1, 2006 | Phil Carlson, SEAL Team Six**

Groom Lake ("Area 51"), Hangar Whiskey-Four 

Operation Nightingale's Claw

 

(0200 hours local)

 

Four massive men in body armor stand at attention in the back of a darkened hangar. Behind the open doors, the flat salty plain of Groom Lake rolls to the horizon. Four big barrel-shaped objects are loaded onto a truck with hoses leading up to them.

"You really took the shot?" asks the man next to Phil.

Phil nods. One day, he’ll have served long enough that no one still cares.

"I did. Scanned the room, saw him going for the gun. Pop, pop, pop."

"Fucker deserved it for 9/11."

A bolt of lighting hits the roof of the hanger and the smell of ozone pricks their nostrils. Two figures in all-black bodysuits and metal-reinforced body armor are illuminated as the current continues to spread over the ceiling. Instead of body armor, both are wearing plates of black fabric under one of the hydraulic lifter suits that the eggheads at DARPA had them testing two years ago.

It was a total joke. A soldier couldn't run in the suit and the noise and the hassle was worth the extra hundred pounds it could lift.

The one who steps forward to address them is an olive-skinned woman with a flat-top haircut, no fewer than eight grenades on her vest straps and more muscles than she could possibly have a practical use for. She’s maybe five-foot-four of pure and uncut ‘fuck you’ wearing black lipstick. Her hydraulic has notches carved on a crossbar and each notch is painted red. Dozens of notches.

Which means it's not a joke to her and that she's worn it while doing real shit.

"Ladies! Listen up! My name is Vasquez, the fella behind me is Reynolds. At all times you will address me with my callsign which is Straightjacket and address Reynolds as Gentleman. We will be leading Hammer and Mercy teams."

"Now, you’re looking at me and thinking ‘this is crazy! I was on the fucking Bin Laden raid and this bitch is half my size. Tom Cruise is going to play me in the movie.’ You’re not wrong."

 _Trash talks like a pro,_ Phil observes.

_Maybe the rumors about this outfit are true. This isn’t a ‘girl power’ photo op for Congress...she's an asshole, not a showboat._

"All you need to know about me is that last night I put a K-bar through the eye of a monster that would make John Wayne, blessed be he, piss himself. You are looking at the devil herself but don’t worry. It’s your lucky day...you boys are about to meet God."

Vasquez’ face is all curled lips and bared teeth.

_Love what you do, do what you love. That's what grandpa said._

Phil thinks that Vasquez would do this for free.

A voice blares over the loudspeakers.

"Technicians, disconnect the fuel lines and initiate pre-flight checks. _Artemis_ and _Apollo,_ set condition one. All personnel to action stations. Foxtrot Heavy crew, flush the fuel lines and being priming engines. Blast doors open in four minutes."

The lights come on and they are face to face with a red-haired woman with a close-cropped haircut that looks like early Elvis, pistols on each thigh and both the stock of a rifle and the handle of a baton sticking out behind her back.

"I am Operative Danvers. I'm in charge for two reasons. One. I have seen some next level shit-storms and I am still breathing. Two. I know more about our targets than everyone in this room combined. For the remainder of this op, your asses are mine. You’re not Navy SEALs. You are not soldiers. You are not even Americans. You are humans. You are defending Earth."

"These," she gestures behind her at towering blocks of metal on the back of a heavy hauler.

"Are cargo transfer barges for an ultra-heavy freighter. They do some neat tricks. All you need to know is that they are tough customers and we’re going to ride them in to space, wave at the guys on the space station and then we hit the LZ like a bullet."

"Once we’re on the ground, you do what you do best. Until that moment, you are cargo. You speak when spoken to and move only when ordered to. You are not qualified to _pilot_ these. You are not qualified to _look at_ the buttons. You are not qualified to _look_ at Vasquez or myself while we do our jobs. Do I make myself clear?"

"Ma’am, yes ma’am!"

Danvers drums her fingers on her thigh holster.

"Who took the shot in Attobad?"

"I took the shot," Phil replies.

"Did you hesitate? You were staring at the most hated man in the world. Orders were capture if possible, kill if not. So was there even a split second before you pulled that trigger where you considered other options?"

"Yes I did hesitate, ma’am."

Danvers nods.

"Good. That’s the right mindset. What’s your name? You got kids?"

"Phil Carlson, ma’am. I have a little girl."

"Congratulations. You’ve got the hard job. You’re on Mercy team with Reynolds."

"You, you and you, are with me. You’re on Hammer with Vasquez."

"The mission details will be streamed into your helmets in flight. Short version: we are going to liberate a facility where a private military group is performing experiments on aliens. Primary objectives are hostage recovery and capture of our HVT, secondary is site demolition.  The HVT is Lillian Luthor."

"This is a joke," the guy beside Phil mutters.

Danvers closes with him, draws the baton on her back and flicks a switch. A steel rod is replaced with a humming blue mass of _something_ that looks painful. Before her heckler can react or block her the tip is in his face, tugging the straps on his helmet out and up. He leans back, fighting whatever force is pulling his face towards the tip of the weapon.

She shuts it off and it's just a steel rod again. He stumbles when released from the pull.

"I am not joking and I am not amused when I am interrupted. I don't know if you read the papers but you may have heard about a new branch of service. I run it. So if you fuck me over, I can make things stick. So anyone else feel the need to piss on their career by laughing at me?"

 _I'll be damned,_ Phil thinks. _I can hear crickets from outside._

"No? Good."

"The _Artemis_ and the _Apollo_ will provide cover from orbit and close fire support if need be. I will take Fist team and kick down some doors, eliminate opposition and locate the HVTs. Hammer will sweep the facility for intel and rig it for demolition. Mercy will load up any prisoners we take and escort civilians to dust off. Anything bleeding, no matter what color the blood, you radio me. Do not assume that your medic training will work on aliens."

"I asked Carlson that question because you will find yourselves in a room with alien refugees. Possibly alien children. These children might be scared. They might be panicking. They might have scales, or three eyes, or two sets of mouths, or four arms, or fucking be on fire, or have fucking poison stingers in the palms of their hands. There may even be something weird or new. I do not care if they look weird. As your commanding officer, I order you not to care."

"You will not see that alien. You will imagine your daughter, your wife, your grandmother at the other end of the barrel. You will not pull that trigger unless you hear my voice."

"Keep in mind that you are either the first human or the first friendly human they ever saw. The way you treat them determines how mama alien treats us when she finds out. You might declare war on an enemy we cannot possibly defeat or your act of kindness might start building an alliance like nothing we've ever had. This is hearts and minds, gentlemen."

"If you're not up to that, say so. I don't want anyone on this op who isn't ready to pick up a hurt alien kid and carry them out. No shame in it. But if that's you, you can't be on this op."

Danvers waits for someone to object.

"You will not fire at anything unarmed or anything weird-looking without my explicit permission. There will be mercs at the compound, well trained and well paid. Assume hostility and do not hesitate. All kills are to be stripped of any patches and identifying gear. Any scientists present will be subdued and marked for extraction either by us or by the CIA."

"Clear?"

Five men salute her.

"Glad to hear it."

Alex draws her weird sidearm and stares at it, caressing the grip with her thumb. Phil has no idea what it does but he’s pretty sure bullets aren’t involved. There’s nowhere to put them.

"And one more thing. If you see a slick-talking bald asshole in a three piece suit, he is abso-fucking-lutely coming with us. If he gives you any shit about that, mess him up. Whoever cuffs him gets a case of their favorite drink."

"If it’s one of you, Vasquez owes me twenty."

The loudspeaker announces another wave of orders to the technicians.

"This is Control. We are go for launch. I repeat, we are go for launch. Operative Danvers, the mission is yours. Godspeed."

Alex turns to the heavy hauler and makes the sign to rally up.

"Swap your gear out for ours and saddle up. Go! Alien toddlers don’t escape on their own, people!"

 


	29. OVER THE WIRE:  Breaking News From CatCo Worldwide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "OVER THE WIRE" is a series of sound bites from news broadcasts or political speeches, or giving a glimpse of other newsworthy events around the world over a period of time.
> 
> This installment covers the late hours of August 28, 2006 leading up to the raid on the LuthorCorp compound.

 

###  **August 29, 2006 | Arch-Commander Tsirii Reyna**

Bridge of the Rynnyta Jiatt ("Passionate Blade")

_Blessing-c_ lass dreadnought and flagship of the Third Fleet of Armali High Command

80,000 kilometers distance to Earth (optimal weapons range)

 

 

"Gunnery, report."

The officer dips her head to her screens and traces a finger along them, checking her work.

"Railguns aligned with Lady Zor-El's coordinates. Arc and plasma cannons primed for a starburst pattern at the facility perimeter. Missile racks loaded with kinetic impactors and electric discharger. Torpedo launchers one through four unsealed and loaded with atmosphere-safe warheads. Singularity projectors are sealed and powered down."

Reyna sips her tea.

 _Twellian seed jam. Best thing Krypton gave the galaxy...second best, perhaps._ She has a weakness for the pale ones. Something unreal about being fucked in mid-air by the unbreakable flesh of a Kryptonian.

"Good. We fire _only_ on Lady Zor-El's word. Do I make myself absolutely clear?"

"Ma'am!" shout a dozen officers.

"Put me through to the human ships."

"Arch-Commander?" her first officer asks.

Reyna points at the display.

"Those two. The Xinsi-Myto cruisers. Unless you can think of a reason a salvage corporation would have two brand-new light cruisers orbiting this mudball? With their markings removed?"

"Translators off," Reyna adds.

"As you say, Arch-Commander."

"Human vessel, this Arch-Commander Reyna on the _Passionate Blade_. acting flagship of the Galactic Unity fleet. Please transmit your ident codes and drive signatures so the joint fleet can mark you as friendly."

It's a male voice that answers.

"This is the USIS _Apollo._ Stand by."

"Get her the fucking codes, Thompson! Read the manual if you have to!" a female snarls.

"Aye-aye, ma'am."

"I am Operative MacAllister of the United States Space Force, commander of this ship. Transmitting our ident codes now along with the _Artemis._ "

Her second in command nods to Reyna.

"Codes check out. Pushing friendly marker to the fleet and excluding you from our targeting computers. Welcome to the galaxy, children of Earth."

 

* * *

 

> **A woman stands on the deck of a ship. The entire scene behind her is pixelated. Only the blue color hints at what might be sky and the gray color at what might be deck or hull. The hum and throb of engines and the whine of some piece of machinery are audible, as is the muted chatter of the crew.**
> 
> **All that remains visible is the reporter with her crimson peacoat cinched tight around her waist and her brown curls tied into a ponytail that whips in the wind like a flag.**
> 
> **"This is Alexandra DeWitt, reporting from a United States Navy vessel, one which has just been instructed to assist with the capture of Lillian and Lex Luthor."**
> 
> **"I'm afraid the ship is so new and her systems so classified that I am not allowed to show you any pictures, except for those of crew cabins. As events unfold, stay tuned to CatCo Worldwide."**

 

"Acceptable?" DeWitt asks.

The captain nods. Her small frame and golden skin seems unreal -- too smooth, too warm -- against the dark blue wool of her dress uniform.

"You think they can do this?" Dewitt asks.

"Yes. I've picked up after Snowstorm Team. If anyone can do this, it's White Knight."

"You guys really love your code-names, don't you?"

"It's the Navy. Traditions are in our blood. Follow me to the bridge, please."

"And you," she barks, jabbing a finger at the cameraman. "I want to see the lens cap on and the battery pulled out, clear?"

 

* * *

 

###  **August 28, 2006 | Lex Luthor**

Northwest Iran

LuthorCorp Mineral Facility

 

Lex shoves the last brick of raw Kryptonite ore into the processor.

"Let's pray it's enough," he huffs.

Lillian sighs.

"Only fools depend on prayer alone."

"We're about to fight a god, mother. Possibly two," Lex sighs. "Prayer seemed appropriate."

"They're not gods, Lex. Or have you forgotten?"

"Little more than vocabulary, at this point. I might not be a god but an ant wouldn't realize that, now would it?"

He sighs.

"Show me to the cell, please. I don't have long to figure out how to contain her."


	30. Popular Uprisings and 45 Revolutions Per Minute

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":**  
>  Where Lena struts, dragons eat chocolate, L-Tech tries to move the needle on gun violence, Kara and Lena go splelunking in Gay Tehran and Lex faces off against Kara and Alex to buy himself some time. 
> 
> **OUR NEXT EXCITING EPISODE:**  
>  With Kara off the board, Alex flees the LuthorCorp facility, alien allies honor their dead and with the infrastructure in ruins, the West Coast tries to dig out without Superwoman, electricity or even bottled water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE #1:**  
>  The story "The Secret LIves of Superheros" has an Iranian-American major character who is Alex's childhood friend. In the story, her family back home in Iran runs a cell phone shop with a tongue-in-cheek name. I couldn't resist creating some Iranian allies for Kara and Lena. (It's an alternate universe Kara+Alex story the strangeness of them being sisters that is handled well. The only Kalex one I've liked.)
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE #2:**  
>  Kara was never just going to build **one** far-out suit of armor. Girlfriend likes to tinker... 
> 
> **AUTHOR'S NOTE #3:**  
>  Lex Luthor has been taking notes on what things hurt Kara and he's going to throw everything in the pot.
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE #4:**  
>  Among the many things we were robbed of in Game of Throne's last season was the rest of the "I once brought a honeycomb and a jackass into a brothel..." story. So Lena's using a Celtic variant of it for a GMail password.
> 
>    
>  **GLOSSARY:**  
>  APC--Armored Personnel Carrier
> 
>  **CODENAMES:**  
>  "Fist team" -- assault team, led by Operative Danvers  
> "Hammer team" -- search and destroy, led by Operative Vasquez  
> "Mercy team" -- rescue and medical team led by Operative Reynolds  
> "White Knight" -- Alex Danver's codename when in the field. Affectionately shortened to "Whisky Kilo" (WK) by her soldiers.  
> "Straightjacket" -- Susan Vasquez's codename when in the field.
> 
>  
> 
>  **STYLE GUIDE:**  
>  _"Italics in quotes"_ are foreign languages.  
> "" in quotes and italics are passages translated from a foreign language. Some passages I will not translate.  
>  _Italics_ are thoughts or observations and always the POV character.  
> [Brackets] are interactions with artificial intelligence and cybernetics, verbal or non-verbal.  
>  **Bold and prefixed** lines are text messages (example--KDKapow: is Kara's main handle)
> 
>  **Bold and block-quoted** lines are recorded messages, radio communications, songs or poems, etc.
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Bold text between horizontal lines indicates notes, emails or writing.**
> 
> * * *
> 
>    
>  **REFERENCE GUIDE:**  
>  Please see "For Your Eyes Only" in CODEX for DEO personnel, roles and codenames.  
> Please see "Coursework for a Minor In Alien Studies" in CODEX for information on alien races in the multiverse.  
> Please see "Kryptowiki: Cast and Crew" for a list of all characters. (upcoming)  
> Please see "Kryptowiki: Mechanical's Handbook" for a breakdown of key gear and ships.

**August 29, 2006 | Lena Luthor**

National City, California

L-Tech Solutions

105th floor, Lena Luthor’s Apartment

 

(7:40 am National City  |  5:30pm Tehran)

 

Lena dabs the lipstick at the corner of her mouth.

_Good enough for the board, I guess._

She could do better--Lillian sent her to makeup tutors--but a real production would be wasted on those lecherous raisins. Save that for this gathering of Kara's this evening.

"Mitzi!" Lena calls out.

"Yes, Miss Luthor?"

"Can you bring me my schedule for today? It's on the tabl-"

"You have a meeting with the board of directors at 8:10am, an internal meeting with Ms Arias, Ms Dox and Ms Haung at 11:45am and a development team meeting at 4:00pm."

"Uh," Lena stalls. "Thanks."

Lena's tablet is untouched on the table and all of that information was behind multiple layers of encryption, two-factor authentication and ridiculously long passwords based on slang, not words and using a mash of English and Gailege.

One of the passwords was an English translation of a poem about that time a drunk brought a wolf and a tub of butter to a whorehouse...

 _Encryption is only as good as the processor trying to brute-force it,_ Lena reminds herself. _Probably should warn Google that she can do that._

Lena's personal attendant robot -- Kara insisted -- is perched on the shelf by the door.  Smaller than Kolex but with the same processors and power core and a frightening amount of weapons. Kara takes Lena's personal defense quite seriously.

"Banshee," Lena calls. "I have a project for you."

The robot zips over, her lift-jets leaving an ozone smell in the room. She opens her four arms with a flourish and bows. Abigail wakes up to find she's in midair, riding a robot. The dragonet squawks indignantly and lifts her emerald-scaled head. Abby nips Banshee's casing and crosses over to Lena's shoulder in one leap.

She must have been curled around the robot for extra warmth.

"Yes, Lady Luthor?"

"Banshee, I want you to work up a countermeasure for encryption breakage. We need to have at least an option to secure ordinary internet communications. Show me some designs tonight and I'll speak to Kara."

The projected surface on the front of Banshee's chest shows a pixelated 'thumbs up'.

"Shall I walk the dragons?"

Two heads jerk up in the next room. Clare and Kerry lumber into the foyer, their snouts preceding their torsos by a good three seconds. Lena chuckles. Kerry cranes his neck up to Lena's face and huffs softly. Clare pretends like she doesn't care what Lena thinks.

"Shh," Lena whispers, blowing across the beast's snout. "Good boy."

_Just like horses, Kara was right. Strange, that a pack predator needs to be soothed like this._

"My my, Kerry. You're getting big!" Lena teases.

_I may ask Kara about riding soon._

"I'll handle the walking," Lena decides.

"I'm sorry kids, but you're too big. I have to have my office renovated first."

_And install a defibrillator. It'll be worth it the next time McGovern slaps my ass, though. The look on the old goat's face when I open the closet door..._

 

 

Lena pushes open the glass doors to the conference room, swinging them wide. Eighteen people, seventeen of them men, stop chattering. Jess ducks her head back to her laptop, probably to hide a smile.

_Kara was right. Channeling the gay drama works here. Bit of drag queen energy and they shut right up._

The dragon purring on her shoulder is just in case they don't get the hint. This is her meeting.

A well-aged woman with silver-blonde hair and a face that looks like it's never once worn a smile looks over her gold-rimmed glasses at Lena.

"You're late, Miss Luthor."

_Ingrid Chapel. That bitch! How did she get her Nazi-spawned ass back onto the board of my company?_

"I'm terribly sorry, Miss Chapel. I was just composing an email to the Office of Special Investigations. I wanted to make sure everything was factual before I sent it...your grandfather still has that vineyard outside Buenos Aires, yes?"

Ingrid's face drains of whatever poison she uses for blood. Lena's lips curl into a sneer.

"I'll take that as a yes. Splendid. The victims of Grini will be thrilled. Eighty-two years, they've waited..."

The whoosh of the email sending from Lena's tablet makes Chapel flinch. At least she's learned when Lena's not bluffing.

"...and sent! Well then, shall we?"

Ingrid hops up from her seat and tries to excuse herself. When she goes past, Lena throws her arm out using one of the blocks Kara taught her.

"I believe it's a misdemeanor to help war criminals escape justice, Ms. Chapel. Or is it a felony? I'm not related to any Nazi camp doctors so I've never bothered to check."

She points at Chapel's cell phone.

"Abby? Fetch."

Abby blinks from Lena's shoulders, wraps her tiny talons around the phone and blinks back. Chapel swings her purse at the dragon only for her to blink out of the way and into the purse, the hard scales on the tip of her tail slapping Ingrid's face as she tries to grab Abby.

She soon settles back on Lena's shoulder, a Toberlone in her teeth. Tossing it in the air for a quick flame-cooking, she settles down at Lena's place on the table, gnawing happily at the candy bar and smashing her claws into the phone's buttons.

Everyone is blinking and rubbing their eyes except for Jess and Lena. Warp bursts are painfully bright to unshielded eyes.

"Sit your Nazi ass down and wait for security," Lena snarls. "You were warned about trying to rejoin this company."

Lena turns on her brightest, least sincere smile.

"My apologies for that. Mr. McGovern, I believe you had a question about items in our new Cosmic line?"

He lifts his ancient head and blinks at her. The only real problem with Harold McGovern is that he's ninety-six years old, as are his manners and his sense of gender roles. At least he was raised staunchly Methodist, so he's not a racist.

"Err, yes. My family has some concerns about the…" he flips through some papers. "Aegis line you're considering."

Lena takes her seat, running a finger over Abigail's head.

"I'm glad you asked. That is one of our more controversial projects. Mercury...that's easy. Who doesn't want a flying car?" Lena jokes.

"Aegis is what we, as people of means and leaders of industry, can do for gun violence."

"How so?" asks one of the younger members.

Jack Spheer is a wannabe silver fox -- he has years to go -- but his work on nanomedicine is fascinating. He's the only board member who Lena would invite to dinner...the only other one besides Kara herself but that investment is off the books.

"How does selling guns lower gun violence?"

Lena reaches over her head and starts up one of the videos with a practiced flick of the fingers in front of the motion sensor. Hopefully none of these men recognize the movement needed to unsnap a front clasp-bra with the 'bad' hand while the dominant hand is on the woman's ass. Practice makes perfect, Lena has found and Kara has been more than willing to wear whatever Lena feels like taking off.

"That is a Glock 13 semiautomatic pistol. Yesterday's weapon. Zero intelligence. One of the most primitive machines considered "modern" in fact. Levers, pistons, springs...nothing special. Nothing that Archimedes did not have two thousand years ago, except for the gunpowder."

Lena gives a different flick to pause it.

"Self-defense tool, we are told. If you point that gun at a schoolchild? It fires. If you point the gun at your own head? It fires. Point it at your wife? It fires. Point it at your dog? It fires. Point it at a mugger in a dark alley? It fires. In four out of five examples, that's a malfunction. A device not working to purpose."

"Why?" Lena demands. "The NRA would tell us that good people need to have guns to stop bad people from having guns. Using guns. Wobbly logic and statistics aside, that only works if _guns work_ to stop the violence. Which they do not."

She starts the video back up.

"That is the Zeus, the first sidearm in our Cosmic line. Laser-primed electric weapon delivering between 1,000 and 5,000,000 volts on a target the width of a number two pencil. A taser, for all intents and purposes. The accuracy, range and handling are all superior to any handgun in existence and in fact, accuracy at two hundred yards is higher than all but one military rifle. Self-contained power source which will outlive its human owner if maximum-powered shots are fired ten times per day."

"People will always want to buy guns. Blame cowboys. Blame action movies or video games or toxic masculinity.  Blame whatever," Lena sighs.

"But I can make guns that _only_ save the woman's life in the dark alley, not get her shot in her kitchen by her boyfriend or have her brains sprayed over the windshield by her curious toddler."

"Take it to a school or any other official gun free zone? It powers down. Point that gun at a child and pull the trigger? It does nothing. Point it at yourself and pull the trigger? It fires an incapacitating shot and -- optionally -- notifies emergency services. Point it at a mugger? Point it at someone holding a weapon? It fires a shot calculated for body mass index, age, gender, and a variety of other factors. They are unconscious, you are safe. Everyone's alive," she explains.

"If you go target shooting, maximum power is allowed on inanimate objects. The onboard computer is capable of telling the difference between a parked car and a car with a driver napping in it."

Jack hums.

"Intriguing. If you think this will sell, I think you are overestimating the good intentions of the average gun aficionado."

Lena sighs.

"Perhaps. But I've already got three major metropolitan police departments clamoring for the first large-scale shipment. They're eager to turn wrongful-death lawsuits into wrongful-zapping lawsuits. I'm making overtures to gun-rights groups to emphasize its stopping power and ease of use. Every one of these that replaces a traditional handgun could save a life."

McGovern harrumphs.

"That's alien technology yes?"

"Alien _inspired_. The design concept is Earth-bound, licensed from General Dynamics. They've been in service in secret for eight years, before widespread knowledge of aliens. This is our implementation of the concept."

"It's got to be expensive to construct," McGovern points out. "What's the profit on this?"

"Expensive to machine, yes. But we can command a price for it. At retail?" Lena asks, drumming her fingers on the table.

McGovern nods.

"Our last estimate was eight to eleven percent."

"We're also hoping to increase sales by offering an introductory deal for the Zeus and the Ares as a package deal."

"The what?" Jack asks. "Did you attend too many classics classes?"

"Possibly," Lena admits. "And my brother, sad to say, was a fanatic for Greek legend. I stewed in it as a little girl."

She clicks the video again.

"The most powerful personal weapon known to man. Quad-barrelled, civilian-grade railgun with an extensive system of kickback protection for the user. We had to get special permission from the Pentagon on this one, gentlemen. Lower rate of fire and lower power than the military issue ones. That shell…"

She points at the diagram where the spherical slug is exiting the barrel.

"Is traveling at sufficient speed to escape the atmosphere."

Jack Spheer laughs.

"This is _safer_?" He demands.

"Yes. All the same targeting protections exist in the Ares as they do in the Zeus, with an added algorithm to account for the fact that the shell keeps moving. Furthermore, it's highly adjustable from a user perspective."

"That shell in the diagram is for duck hunting. About ten feet past the barrel, it will shatter on the edge of the magnetic field. It is made of a particularly low-melting temperature steel shot. Whatever doesn't make contact will melt in the next thousand feet of air it travels through. A few grams of iron ore in the form of pellets not much bigger than dust, rapidly losing speed."

"The advertisement, however…is decidedly more manly."

Lena plays the TV spot.

  

> **"My name is Clint Eastwood. When I was a boy, my dad taught me to shoot. He said: "Son. If you're a man, you need to know this.'. I've kept that motto. But a shooter's no better than his gun."**
> 
> **"The cost of freedom is high. We all must be ready to pay it. We must be ready in case some little punk thinks it's his lucky day."**
> 
> **The actor hefts a custom-painted Ares to his shoulder and looks down the sights. The camera switches to an old pillbox -- three layers of concrete and a rusted German machine gun dangling from its mount -- as seagulls caw overhead.**
> 
> **The camera zooms in on the trigger as it pulls back. In extreme slow motion, the egg-shaped round leaves the barrel, glowing red hot by the time it fully emerges. It slams the side of the pillbox, shattering it and sending a spray of sand up on the other side.**
> 
> **Eastwood swings around and points it at a cardboard cutout of a little girl and pulls the trigger. Nothing. He points it at a cardboard cutout of a gang member and fires, leaving a rapidly-burning hole in the center of the man's head.**
> 
> **"Compact. Convenient. Powerful. The best safety your family can have. I'm Clint Eastwood. This is the Ares."**

 

Lena stops the ad.

"We appeal to the same psychology the current ads are: Men...protect your family, eat wild animals, be the big man. Ladies...be safe at night.  But we can add what they don't: your kids will be safe. You won't get hurt in a misfire. My team is working with some firearms instructors to get testimonials."

"We as businessmen can be certain that not one penny we earn from this was involved in a school shooting."

Jack nods, apparently satisfied.

"I had to listen to that man talk about his fishing vacation and his politics," she jokes. "Soured my own jaunt to Paris. I want that considered in my bonus this year."

McGovern laughs.

"He cheats at golf, too," the old man grumps.

She raps her papers sharply on the table and stands.

"Gentlemen."

She looks at the thoroughly cowed, softly sniffling Nazi in the corner. Ingrid is penned in by Tom--her head of security while Mercy is recovering--and two of Lena's own detail.

"Keep her here, Tom."

Lena leans down as she walks by Ingrid.

"If you skip your court date, I'll hunt you down and feed you to my pets. My _other_ pets," she whispers.

Abby is still at Lena's seat, gnawing on the charred wrapper for the Toblerone.

"Come along, Abigail."

 

* * *

**August 29, 2006 | Sharazad**

Tehran, Iran

Twelfth District

"Spin Zone Records"

 

(9:52 pm, Tehran time)

 

The windows are drawn and the street is dark.

The roar of the government aircraft overhead shakes the ceiling and the posters shiver. Here in the backroom, traditional singers share space with Joan Jett and the Sex Pistols and the owner's pride and joy: a nearly-new poster from Janelle Monae's "Dirty Computer" music video. Carefully tucked under the leather-bound ledger of sales and expenses is an oiled, loaded and calibrated Kalashnikov.

"Mother, are we going to die?" Shah's youngest asks.

"Ravan, shh…"

She clutches her son to her chest.

"Why would you ask such a silly thing?"

"Because you're different. Because you're alone. Because Firuzeh is different."

_What can I tell him? That I need no husband to raise good children? That no man would love Zeh same the way that Azar does? That the imams on television are monsters? That their hate has cost Iran everything? That I dream of the day he will leave for somewhere else and never return to me?_

So does what she can. She kisses his small, dark mop of hair.

Shah glances down at her mobile.

_Daughter mine…_

A government crackdown, troops in the streets and her daughter has not called. No doubt they've been searching the universities first. Shah prays that Zeh knows exactly how worried she is and that the fool girl's hair catches fire. Maybe then she'll call her mother.

Shah hefts Ravan against her hip, humming the old Persian tune her mother hummed to her.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Someone is knocking, ever so softly, on the back door. A shadow of a head and shoulders covers part of the curtain. Shah slips off her shoes, quietly as she can manage, and pads over to the cash register. She lays Ravan on the blanket behind her chair.

Slipping her hands around the Kalish, she checks the chamber and takes aim.

"It's open," she calls out.

The woman who enters it is wearing a black _abaya_ robe and a headscarf, green with silver trim. The green matches her eyes and the dark robe matches the wisp of hair.

"Why are you in my store?" Shah growls.

"I...I…" the woman stammers. "Is this not the right place?" she asks in Farsi.

The woman is white--very white--and yet she speaks Farsi like she was born to it and she smiled when she glanced at the _chelow kebab_ cooling in the pan. She rolls up her sleeve and holds up her wrist. Tied around it is a ribbon of white silk with the flag of Iran on it.

"I'm going to turn this over, slowly," the woman tells Shah.

The other side wears a pink triangle.

"Am I in the right place?" she asks again. "I was led to believe I was."

"Did my daughter send you?" Shah demands.

"Yes. My name is Lena Luthor. I know her from the university. I asked her for your address when I arrived in the country. I met your daughter at a conference in Ne-"

"When?" Shah shrieks. "When did you speak with her?"

"Two hours ago, when I arrived. She's alive and well."

Shah raises the gun.

"You lie. All the flights have been canceled today."

"That's...not how I flew in," the woman replies, a smile on her painted lips.

A huge shape enters the doorway. It's a man: massive and wearing some kind of armor. Without thinking, without looking, Shah fires. When the ringing in her ears fades, Shah sees the bullet motionless, pinched between armored fingers. The featureless glass of the helmet changes color and a woman's face appears. Black skin and golden eyes. Long hair like silver chains worthy of a sultan's treasures.

The strange giant smiles.

"We mean no harm, Sharazad."

"It would've helped if I had her name," the smaller woman grumbles.

"You could've asked, babe."

Pulling her helmet off, the larger woman dips down for a kiss.

"Mama," Ravan yawns. "They're husband and wife. Like Zeh and Azar."

"Ooh," the big woman purrs. "I like the way he thinks."

Shah relaxes her grip on the Kalish.

"Hush, Ravan."

She beckons them inside and locks the door. As she lifts the rug over the trapdoor, she hears Ravan giggle.

"Make again!" he demands. Whatever he wants, he's willing to use all the English he knows to get more of it.

Shah turns around. The big woman has a pair of pencils suspended over her gloved palm, drifting lazily in mid-air, as if no one ever heard of things falling when they're dropped. A completely enchanted Ravan is tapping on them with another pencil, making them spin and trying to write on the side of one.

"She likes kids," the pale woman--Lena--tells Shah.

"Her having children?" Shah muses. "Too dangerous. They would be giants."

Lena shrugs.

Shah yanks open the trap door into the catacombs.

"Come along, Kara," Lena calls out.

"Yes, dear."

"I come!" Ravan insists.

Shah sighs. She nods to Lena.

"Bring him, Kara dear."

The first quarter-mile is damp and hot. They wind downward through the rock under the oldest parts of the city, past stacks of bones and the graves of holy men and deeper still, into forgotten places.

"This is amazing," Lena breathes.

"My daughter discovered them. Pulled a few artifacts out for the university. But she told no one. Tehran has been settled for 7,000 years The Ayatollahs have existed for less than forty. This necropolis owes them nothing, Zeh said. These aren't on the government's maps. As far as we can tell, they lead nowhere other than to a few places like my shop."

Lena nods.

"No real reason for the government to look for them then. Not an escape route or an infiltration route."

"Exactly Firuzeh's thinking. How is she?" Shah asks.

"She's fine. She and..."

"Azar," Shah adds.

"Azar, yes. We didn't speak for long this afternoon," Lena admits. "Firuzeh was working on her syllabi for next term, she said. I heard singing in the background, I think. And cooking."

Shah smiles.

"Azar sings when she cooks," Shah chuckles. "Like she can't help herself. I think she doesn't leave the apartment. Azar wants what every Iranian girl is supposed to want: a strong husband, too much to cook and too many children."

"She just wants it with another woman,"   Shah sighs.

"I did hear some boasting about stews. Azar likes the new normal...not you, though?" Lena asks.

Shah rolls her eyes.

"No, not me. That's why I'm leading two foreign women through a secret tunnel while martial law is in effect."

"Fair point," Lena admits.

Shah closes her eyes.

"I was eight when the revolution happened. I know there was a before this and that Allah willing, there will be an after this. I remember my mother throwing her Western clothes outside to the street where men were burning them.  Clothes she had saved for months to buy."

"My father was kind, or kind enough." Shah stops moving. "Enough," she realizes.

"That's what he was. My father was enough. Kind enough. Loving enough. Modern enough. What the revolution did not change was their marriage. So he raised his sons as he saw fit and my mother raised me as she saw fit."

Shah strokes the wall of the tunnel. Her fingers scrape a faded inscription that's a thousand years older than Islam, according to her daughter...the smartest woman she's ever met.

"And here I am, leading fornicators and killers through holy ground older than the Prophet, older than Alexander, quite possibly older than Moses."

Shah takes her hand off the wall.

"This stone is older and weaker," she warns Lena. "Take care."

"I think Azar would want to be Firuzeh's wife no matter what," Lena murmurs. "I heard it in Firuezeh's voice. Softness. I know the sound because I've noticed it in my own. I was never loved, not really, certainly not properly, before I met Kara. To be loved that way changes a person, every time."

"Hot," Ravan whines.

"Not for long," Kara replies.

He giggles and Shah turns to look. Somehow half of the blanket he's wrapped in is now crusted in ice.

"Your woman is strange," Shah huffs.

"She is," Lena chortles. "She truly is."

Shah puts her hand on the steel of the gate. Something from a hardware store, carefully mounted into the parts of the doorway where murals and sculpture was already destroyed.

"Here we are."

Ravan collides with her and hugs her side. His still-frosted blanket presses against her.

"Nice," he declares.

"You will freeze," Shah corrects him.

"I'm strong."

He flexes his tiny bicep.

"So's an iceberg," she teases, still in English. "But I won't have one for a son."

"Iz-che-burg?" he asks.

"Quiet now.  Studying later," Shah replies, scooping him up.

_What a blessing to have smart children._

The big woman steps past her.

"Marvelous," she murmurs.

"How old?"

"Zeh said that the paint dust dated from 5,800 to 6,400 years old. She was looking for better samples, she said."

The massive bag that Kara had been carrying slides to the floor without even a whisper of fabric. She opens the top and pulls out two metal cylinders.

"I can help with that. Least I can do."

She taps something into a keypad on each cylinder.

"Shah, name them, please."

"Beg your pardon?"

"Name them. They're living servants. They need names."

"What do they do?" Shah asks.

"Uh, anything you need."

"What are they best at?" Shah demands. "You do not call a blacksmith and a cobbler or vice versa, do you now?"

Kara smiles.

"They can build things," she replies, staring at the cylinders. "Or help you learn."

Shah walks closer.

"So I just…"

"Put your thumb on the panel and speak the name. It will see you as family and protect you. I will make sure your daughters have a remote so that it knows them."

"Daughters?" Shah beings. "Ah. Firuzeh and Azar both. I sometimes forget that's how Americans see them."

She presses her thumb to one keypad.

" _Zana_." <"Wise" or "wise one" | Farsi | Male given name >

She turns to the other.

" _Urstad_." <"Master craftsman" | Farsi | Honorific >

Both cylinders rattle and wobble. The plate on the top pops off, clattering to the cobblestones. From the cylinders climb two almost human creatures. Shah's breath catches and she tries not to scream. Their limbs and bodies are thin--like an artist had never finished sketching them--and made of a metal that ripples and shivers. Once freed, they stand to their full height, taller even than Kara.

"Listen to your creator," Kara tells them.

Both turn to face her.

"You are now in service to Sharazad, her children and her loved ones. Accept this now, or reject it. No harm will come for rejection. Commit to your answer."

One of the featureless faces leans turns to Shah and leans close. Shah whimpers. Suddenly the creature jerks back and from its liquid surface rises a nose, a brow and a pair of lips. The eyes are no different than the liquid behind them--black and shiny--but they blink open and the face curls into a smile.

"Are they trying to calm me?" Shah demands.

Kara nods.

"These are a new design. They shape themselves better to their surroundings than the others. So the first thing they will do, should they accept the contract, is shape themselves to _you_."

"We accept this, creator," they say as one.

"Splendid!" Kara exclaims.

Kara claps her hands together, the sound ringing through the chamber and up the corridor they followed. Lena picks up a pebble and tosses it at Kara's face.

"All right," Kara admits. "I deserved that."

Shah clutches Ravan close.

"Why are you doing this for me?"

Kara shakes her head.

"Not for you, exactly. For Firuzeh. Azar. People like them. People who would be jailed or killed for the way they breathe or the way their hearts beat. When I visit a new country, I find someone like your daughter and I give him or her tools."

She pulls a pale gray cylinder from her bag. At the tip is a sphere of crystal or glass that glows white...painfully so.

"This," Kara explains, patting the cylinder.

"Is a beacon. Anything you ask for it will bring here. Instantly. Ask it for weapons and it will give you weapons the regime cannot imagine. Ask it for medicine and it will send an attendant and surgical chambers that can cure anyone not already dead. Ask it for food..."

Kara laughs.

"And you may want to be more specific. Good nutrition is not the same as good tasting."

"If I want to escape?" Shah wonders aloud.

"You have only to ask. It will take you and whatever you can carry here to a small town on the coast of Mexico, self-ruled and protected from other nations. If you like, we can provide you funds to go from there. If they want, I can arrange for Azar and Firuzeh to be sent directly to an apartment in California. One they can share with like minds."

Shah throws her arms around Kara.

"Hugging," Kara chuckles. "Apparently universal."

 

* * *

**August 30, 2006 | Alex Danvers**

Northwest Iran

LuthorCorp Mineral Facility

 

(01:11am, Local Time)

 

Alex clicks the fiber optic in her suit into the binocs and lifts them to her face.

[Echo, you getting this?]

[Yes. Analysis module running. What shall I identify?]

[Unique personnel. Small arms types. Vehicles. Pop-up turrets or high-quality camo. Lex seems to like that.]

[Sneaky bastard.] Echo replies.

[I'm mounting the binocs now, Echo. Let me know if it's crooked.]

She clicks the binoculars into place and turns the dials Winn and she jury-rigged to rotate the lens. Four hours quality time and several threats to Winn's life later, Alex walked out of his apartment with a hardened resin mount for her DEO-issue binocs and rebuilt lenses with a 200-degree field of view. Too much for the human brain to focus on.

[Assume that any hardware is either Eastern bloc or non-aligned European: Swiss, Swedish, Finnish. Put it up visually once you're confident.]

As she watches the projections from Echo which are tickling her retina, a pair of Navy SEALs are huddled against the propane tank with her. Whatever swagger they had vanished when Alex took out a teleoperated machine gun with a railgun shot from the hip. The turret was slagged and as she'd hoped, the residual magnetic surge prevented any sort of image from making it back.

"Count eighteen guards on the surface. Four-man patrols, each corner. Two in the central tower with the heavy weapons. APC in the north garage. Air vents are eighty meters inside the fence. Looks like AG-6 and MP5, two sharpshooters. Modified barrels. Assume they fire hollow-point corrosives," Alex reports.

_Looks a lot like the mods at the Russian base._

She changes the channel to all teams.

"Walk soft."

"Copy that, Whiskey-Kilo," Vasquez replies.

Reynolds sends three clicks. He must be hunkered down near the enemy where he can't talk.

[Echo, ping Reynolds.]

[Jesus!] rings a tinny voice in her head.

[Echo?] Alex asks.

[That was a verbatim relay. It appears that Operative Reynolds was not expecting implant-to-implant communication.]

Alex sighs.

[Schedule him for training, with me, first opportunity.]

[This method is silent, Mercy team. Sitrep.]

[Undertsood, ma'am. Auto-turret coverage from breach point to evac is ninety-five percent. All of the IFF badges are tested and switched on.]

[Transmats?]

[Paired and ready, Whisky-Kilo.]

[Good man, Reynolds. Send me a ghost of any alien you think you can attach one to. If we move wounded with those, it's ugly.]

[Yes, ma'am.]

[Echo, send him the how-to on ghost imaging, just so he doesn't fry my retinas.]

[Done.]

"What's the move?" the SEAL next to her asks.

"We breach here, at command. Twenty-second delay and Fist hits the surface personnel. Mercy breaches the machine shop. That's as close as we can get to the prisoner storage without setting off alarms. Once we're underground, orbital bombardment begins."

"On three…"

 

* * *

**August 30, 2006 | Lex Luthor**

Northwest Iran

LuthorCorp Mineral Facility

 

(01:13am, Local Time)

 

Lex cranks the wrench back.

"Run it again," he calls out to the technician.

_I doubt that. You've been fiddling with it for an hour. Kryptonite gas doesn't grow on trees._

"It's clean, sir. We checked," the tech assures them.

Lex rolls his eyes.

"So, if I were to ask you to sit in there unmasked while I pumped a hydrogen cyanide canister through the valves…that would be no big deal? You're confident?"

The technician swallows a lump in his throat.

"I'll water-test it again," he croaks.

"Good man."

The overhead lighting switches to red. Lillian's voice comes over the intercom.

"This is the commander. Everyone arm yourselves and report to the nearest barricade."

In the corner of his eye, he sees four blocks of concrete rise from the floor at the nearest juncture. Lab techs and office staff are huddled behind them, fumbling with weapons. People who have never touched a gun, most likely.

"Stay here!" Lex bellows, pointing his wrench at the tech.

"The comma-"

"Is my mother! And she has no fucking chance! You want to live? Get this room sealed."

"Yes, sir."

He flips up the hidden latch on his Rolex and presses his finger to the scanner.

'Warsuit deploying…" reports the computer.

 

* * *

  **August 30, 2006 | Kara Danvers**

Northwest Iran

LuthorCorp Mineral Facility

500 meters of altitude

 

(01:15am, Local Time)

 

Kara has been whispering the Worldkiller trigger words to herself for ten minutes now. Her brain is sizzling and her skin is crawling.

_Need to get a grip on myself before the shooting starts._

"I'll admit it. I miss the cape," Kara tells the inside of her helmet. "Is that egotistical of me?  Actually...don't answer that, Blue Beetle."

A winky-face emoji is protected across her whole tactical display.

[Better. After the joke, your stress hormones plateaued.]

[You know me well, Blue Beetle.]

Far above her, a flare bursts and illuminates the entire complex.

[That flare was from Alex's railgun?]

[Yes, Lady Kara.]

Kara exhales.

[Alex, where do you need me?]

A little red "X" appears on her visor.

[Hard as you can, Kara. It's Lex. And that fucking suit.]

[Blue Beetle, run an analysis. If possible, transmat the Hammer suit to me. Single-pass transmat or it's not worth bothering. Allow three microseconds for system integration.]

[Running numbers. You may have to clear the surface to attach, if this works.]

[I know.]

_If Lex wants to play Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Robots, I get to bring my big toys._

 

* * *

 

**BONUS SCENE**

* * *

  **Lex Luthor**

Northwest Iran

LuthorCorp Mineral Facility

 

Another round from the soldier's railguns strikes the left shoulder plate, bouncing off as a spray of liquid steel.

It's a bulletfrom a very _familiar_ looking gun. One he remembers designing in a blur of espresso, marijuana and Kahlua several years ago.

"Is that the LuthorCorp Dynamics EK-12?" he calls out.

_Poor souls. Their gear is always designed by the lowest bidder._

"Computer, send a code 132-B pulse to all compatible receivers."

"Code sent. Remote shutdowns confirmed," the suit replies.

"Not bad," Lex chuckles. "My turn now."

He raises both arms and charges the plasma cannons. Whoever this ginger is, she's clearly in charge of the show.

"Take the head off the snake and the re-"

Striking from behind, something throws him into the opposite wall. Something massive. Something black. Something powerful. Something with that _fucking symbol_ on the chestplate.

This is not the suit she fought in at CatCo. It's at least fifteen feet tall and the glove is large enough to wrap all the way around his helmet as she pins him to the wall. Her other hand is wrapped around one of the arm cannons and is gradually crushing the plates.

All over the inside of his helmet, the suit is reporting damage. Snapped pistons. Ruptured fuel cells. Cascading overloads in every circuit hooked to the ruined cannon. A spiderweb crack straight through the Kryptonite harness.

"The females are deadlier, indeed."

 _Three hours, I sparred with Superman on a bet._ _Eight seconds with her in a real fight and it's scrap._

Superwoman's faceplate switches to transparent. It's strange that she's angry. Her cousin never looked angry. No matter how awful it was, Lex's crimes didn't anger Kal.  It was more like he was confused.  Not her. She knows how to be angry. If that twitch in her cheek is any clue, she maybe even knows what it is like to kill someone.

"Stand down, Lex! I don't want to hurt you."

"That's the problem with heroes. Your standards are too high."

He mutes his radio.

"Computer, set auto-destruct to thirty seconds. Use the nuke. Let's give our guests a show."

_Here, mousey-mousey-mousey. Look at the nice piece of cheese…_

"Self destruct initiated," the intercom reports. "Reactor set to overload. Thermonuclear blast in thirty seconds. Twenty-nine...twenty-eight."

"Fuck!" Superwoman swears.

She tosses Lex aside. He skids and bounces before finally crashing into a barricade a few feet from the soldiers.

"Self destruct mechanism damaged. Please repair. Please repair. Please re-"

The automated voice drops off to static. In what remains of his visor, he can see Superwoman pounding at the walls of the reactor room as the gas trickles in. The laser must've lasted long enough to core her faceplate and let the gas in because flecks of blood can be seen on the glass.

_She realized that the walls were uranium-lined. Small blessings._

He looks up at his captors. One of them, a Latina with a buzz cut, is holding an eight-inch thick piece of rebar with a chunk of concrete at the end...concrete flecked with shards of glass and smashed circuitry and more than a few smears of blood. The special forces behind her are a bit green around the gills and they're keeping three paces between her and them at all times.

"The new suits are _awesome_ ," she purrs.  "So much better for hand to hand."

"Weapon, Straightjacket. From our private collection," the ginger demands.

"There's no need for ceremony," Lex chortles. "Nothing you have can poss-"

The weapon he's staring down is completely unlike anything he's ever built, though he recognizes a few of the parts from other manufacturers.  The spaceship in the hangar has a power core like that in its reactor and the same emitter array on its arc weapons. The other two barrels do things he isn't familiar with.

 _Well shit,_ Lex thinks.

"Shut the fuck up or I make a black hole in your eye socket," the ginger snarls.

"You are bluffing. Even if that could make one, it would kill you too."

"I don't need a _big one_ to hollow your skull," she reminds him.

Tapping on the weapon with her thumb, she turns on six targeting lasers which focus on his cheek.

"Thirteen micrometers," she tells him, looking at the readout. "Estimated lifespan of three hundred fifty femtoseconds. Matter consumption threshold of two hundred to four hundred grams."

 _The math works,_ Lex realizes.   _That would take off most of my head and then collapse._

She chuckles.

"I mean, it'll probably leave your brainstem intact. Wouldn't want your heart stopping."

He raises his hands in surrender. In the corner of his visor, he sees Superwoman dropping to her knees.

"Took you with me, at least."

He sees a steel-reinforced fist heading for his face...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ## AAAAAAAH! WHAT HAPPENED TO KARA???
> 
> ## 


	31. OVER THE WIRE: Breaking News From CatCo Worldwide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "OVER THE WIRE" is a series of sound bites from news broadcasts or political speeches, or giving a glimpse of other newsworthy events around the world over a period of time.
> 
> This covers the first six hours of August 30, 2006, Pacific Time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE #1:**  
>  Not everyone Superwoman saves gets away clean. Some lose a limb, or a hand, or are otherwise injured before she arrives... The Memory of Krypton Foundation offers medical treatment for those and, to interested parties, a side job in the _Momento Mori_ where they undertake the less official, less legal, less ready-for-TV aspects of Superwoman's mission and the mission for social justice.
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE #2:**  
>  Thessalians take their alliance with Krypton really seriously. They are heavily intermarried and see Krypton as a sister to their own homeworld. Following the War of Bodies (circa 120,000 BC) and the joint effort to push back against Daxamite sex-slavers, the Kryptonian Navy and Gaurd and the Thessalian Zealotry have operated in unison thousands of times across the galaxy.
> 
> The formal alliance predates the "Cro Magnon" archeological sites in Europe. A galactic "cycle" is a standardized unit of "years" averaging the years of the five founding species' homeworlds. Due to the insanely long Kryptonian year and the very short year of Colu Prime, this works out to about 1.6 Earth years. That is what the Arch Commander is using here.
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE #3:**  
>  Thessalian naval and ground units make use of their species' lack of aging and take veterancy into account in assigning rank. Any soldier or sailor with the honorific of 'Arch-Commander' is one who has held the rank of Commander for 4,000 cycles...the equivalent of 6,400 Earth years. Fewer than one hundred such veterans typically exist in the Zealotry at any time.

 

###  **August 30, 2006 | Television Viewers**

 

 

 

> **"What you're seeing is the first television images out of Los Angeles since the incident. After our inability to contact our friends at W-A-G-L in LA, we decided to drive out and see for ourselves."**
> 
> **The anchor gestures to the pre-dawn skyline and the megacity behind him. Nothing gives off light but the moon.**
> 
> **Fires burn in long straight lines in treetops and along concrete riverbeds. Cars are wrapped around tree trunks or light poles or simply stopped in mid-intersection. Confused human beings sit on front steps and curbs and in their back yards, staring at shorted-out televisions and microwaves and air-conditioners. In the corner of the shot, a little girl plays with her dogs by lamplight, utterly unbothered.**
> 
> **"While the government has not ye-"**
> 
> **He presses his hand to the earpiece.**
> 
> **"This just in, I'm being told that the President has declared a nationwide state of emergency to deal with what is being called an act of nuclear terrorism by Lillian Luthor. Any citizens with implants such as pacemakers should immediately seek medical attention. Any and all electrical appliances in the affected area are to be disconnected and treated as a fire hazard. We will bring you more as we have it."**
> 
> **"This is Hank MacAllister for Phoenix-16 and CatCo Worldwide."**

 

* * *

 

 

###  **August 30, 2006 | Arch-Commander Tsirii Reyna**

Bridge of the Rynnyta Jiatt ("Passionate Blade")

Blessing-class dreadnought and flagship of the Third Fleet of Armali High Command

80,000 kilometers distance to Earth (optimal weapons range)

 

"Status?"

"Eighty-six craft lost. Frigates, interceptors, dropships, two espionage corvettes from the Coluans. Escape pods put the survivors at seventy-two percent."

"What happened?"

Her tactical officer looks up from her station.

"Improvised nuclear device, enriched with white sand."

_Abyssal filth!_

She turns to her second-in-command. Thousands of years her junior but a capable officer in any situation. The only one on this bridge whose opinion she would trust on more than the spelling of their own name.

"The human criminals, they took white sand when they took Tryala hostage?"

"Affirmative."

"Notify the entire force that there may be significant quantities of white sand in the hands of the terrorists. They are unskilled with it, clearly...radiological precautions at all times."

Her communications officer nods.

"Something remarkable about them," Tsirii admits.

"How so?"

_Eager to learn, young one?_

She gestures to the tactical display.

"When the explosion ripped through the picket ships, the human ships moved first. A species which had no colonies, no shipping lanes, no history which has trained only two crews on two ships they did not understand...they overcharged their shields and moved to shield our smaller vessels. And did so expertly."

She drums her fingers on the command console.

"What of High Councilor Zor-El?"

"Nothing on her transponder, Arch-Commander. Last signal we have is a sudden drop in vital signs."

Tsirii leaps to her feet.

"Unacceptable!" she bellows. "A hundred thousand cycles, we have stood beside Krypton. Fought with them. In those years, no High Councilor of Krypton has died while in under the protection of our Zealots. Not on any battlefield! Not Daxam! Not Davarr! Not Starhaven!  And not here! Every one of us, every Zealot on this ship, swore an oath to Armali's defense and to the defense of our sister worlds."

"We will not be the first crew to fail!  Zor-El does not die, not while even one of us breathes!"

Dozens of trembling soldiers and officers stare up at the captain's dias and at her clenched fists.

"Deploy everything with an engine and a viewport," she snarls. "Search this system and find her."

 

* * *

  

###  **August 30th, 2006 | Trinity Jornada**

 

Rural California

Abandoned US Air Force Munitions Storage Facility, Bunker 34

The hideout of "R3v3nant" Hacker Collective and _Momento Mori_ cell Zeta-Two

 

"Boss!" someone hollers.

"Not interested," Trinity mumbles.

"Tickles," June giggles. "When you talk…"

Trinity clenches her teeth around the nipple, just a bit.

"So good, Trin…" June purrs.

Trinity curls her fingers, pushing further into the brunette. 

There aren't nearly enough bodies like this in the world...those that there are not cherished.  June is all curves.  Her breasts are springy under the teeth her nipples are hard as pebbles from a river.  A flush has speckled her pale skin.

They haven't exchanged numbers and June's never been with a woman before so her only hope of a repeat is to _really_ get June off.  Show her what she's missing.

"Boss!"

Trinity squeezes the g-spot one more time before she pulls her mouth of the nipple with a 'pop' and pulls her hand out.

"Sorry, doll."

"Aw...don't be sorry," June gasps. "Ah had fun. Nice to know I'm someone's type."

 _If men won't fuck her, men are stupid.  I'm going to orgasm every time I hear a country singer if she doesn't ease up on the Carolina drawl…_ Trinity thinks.

"Come back soon, tough stuff...next time I want the metal hand in me."

"It's cold."

"Good. I'll warm it right up."

Trinity starts throwing her jacket on and June sinks back onto the mattress and twirls her fingertip on the floor.

"Bra," June commands.

"What?"

"Wear...a...bra. Those are _amazing_ and I want them back here in the same condition they left."

She flings a nearly-clean sports bra at Trinity's head.

"Bet it's like riding a stainless steel dildo," June muses.

Trinity's artificial hand clenches tight on the corner of her workbench and crumples it.

"Tease."

"You love it," June laughs.

Yanking the door open, Trinity finds Cobra and Fuse on the other side, both of them with arc pistols and railguns strapped on and with charging cables jacked into their cybernetics. The Twins took on more than anyone else.  After the car crash, they each needed legs and some vertebrae but they asked for full rebuilds and put in some pretty wild subsystems in the process. The brain tissue and their sass is original. The rest isn't.

"What's up?"

"Em-em call," Cobra replies, pulling the lead from her right arm and smoothing the emulated skin back down. "Search and rescue to the San Diego area."

Fuse opens his palm and watches the arcs of plasma cutters dance off the tips of his fingers.

"Who needs the jaws of life?" he chuckles.

"Ninety seconds," Trinity tells them.

"You got forty," Rat replies. "Or I'll stay with her and you can go. Just grab some pants. Not like you need anything else to do this job."

Trinity yanks the nearest jeans she can find on...and realizes they're June's. A wolf-whistle from behind her suggests she has permission.

She locks the door behind her and spins the crank to power up the electromagnetic seal. Cobra tosses her a satchel bag with her guns, her camo suit and her medical kit.

"Thanks."

 

* * *

 

###  **August 30, 2006 | Television Viewers**

 

 

> **"You're watching video sent to us by a bystander at what would have been a tragic crime scene. As you can see here, the would-be shooter was stopped by a woman using a high-tech artificial limb of some kind. The good Samaritan disappeared before she could be interviewed.  The suspect was later taken into police custody."**
> 
> **"This is Hank MacAllister for Phoenix-16 and CatCo Worldwide."**
> 
>  

* * *

 

###  **August 30, 2006 | All web browsers pointed at www.youtube.com**

 

> **A woman with a Greek actor's mask on her face sits against a bare concrete wall, twirling a combat knife between glistening metal fingers.**
> 
> **"Greetings, puny humans."**
> 
> **"You're wondering where your cat videos are."**
> 
> **"They're still here. But first, I need to talk to you. We are those who would be dead. We are those for whom salvation was not a policeman, or a fireman, or a soldier, or a doctor...it was a woman dropping out of the sky like the answer to our prayer."**
> 
> **"When human justice did not value our lives, hers did. When human kindness failed us, hers did not. When human violence struck us down, her strength pulled us back up. When our bodies were broken and ruined by all humanity could not do...she saved us with what she could do."**
> 
> **"Her technology rebuilt us. Made us stronger, smarter, faster."**
> 
> **"We are the next human race. We will be watching. We will not forget. We will not forgive. We are the last victims.  The next man who lifts a hand to butcher, rob, rape or maim another soul as they did to us...loses his hand."**
> 
> **"We are the Momento Mori. We are everywhere."**

 

Eleven million unique visitors to the website see the message in the same instant. An hour later, every news station has covered it and it has been tweeted about three times for every man, woman and child on the planet.


	32. Fools, Small Children, and...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":**  
>  With Kara off the board, Alex flees the LuthorCorp facility, alien allies honor their dead, rescuers search for Kara, and we meet a dashing sea captain!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE #1:**  
>  Lena isn't grabbing the alien's actual genitals (as far as we know). The membrane and exposed brain tissue on the underside of a a Thessalian's crests are incredibly sensitive and can be either immensely painful or erotic depending on how and in what context it is touched. #Braingasm (see CODEX for more)
> 
>  
> 
>    
>  **GLOSSARY:**  
>  E-KIA -- Enemy Killed in Action  
> EMP -- Electromagnetic pulse.  
> HVT-1 -- Lillian Luthor  
> HVT-2 -- Lex Luthor  
> JSOC -- Joint Strategic Operations Command  
> KIA -- Killed in Action  
> SEAL -- A member of the United States Navy Sea, Air, and Land teams (SEALs).  
> USSC -- United States Space Corps (formerly DEO). Term for infantry operations undertaken under the United States Space Force Command (as opposed to flying missions).
> 
>  **CODENAMES:**  
>  "Fist team" -- assault team, led by Operative Danvers.  
> "Gentleman" -- Aaron Reynold's codename while in the field.  
> "Hammer team" -- search and destroy, led by Operative Vasquez.  
> "Ice" -- Pham Demos' codenname while in the field.  
> "Mercy team" -- rescue and medical team led by Operative Reynolds.  
> "Operation Nightingale's Claw" -- Raid on the LuthorCorp prison camp. Named in reference to Florence Nightingale, nurse in the British Army during Crimean War.  
> "White Knight" -- Alex Danver's codename when in the field. Affectionately shortened to "Whisky Kilo" (WK) by her soldiers.  
> "Snowstorm" -- Codename for the first USSC/DEO fireteam (DEO-1), so named because their first mission was in North Dakota.  
> "Straightjacket" -- Susan Vasquez's codename when in the field.  
>  
> 
>  **STYLE GUIDE:**  
>  _"Italics in quotes"_ are foreign languages.  
> "" in quotes and italics are passages translated from a foreign language. Some passages I will not translate.  
>  _Italics_ are thoughts or observations and always the POV character.  
> [Brackets] are interactions with artificial intelligence and cybernetics, verbal or non-verbal.  
>  **Bold and prefixed** lines are text messages (example--KDKapow: is Kara's main handle)
> 
>  **Bold and block-quoted** lines are recorded messages, radio communications, songs or poems, etc.
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Bold text between horizontal lines indicates notes, emails or writing.**
> 
> * * *
> 
>    
>  **REFERENCE GUIDE:**  
>  Please see "For Your Eyes Only" in CODEX for DEO personnel, roles and codenames.  
> Please see "Coursework for a Minor In Alien Studies" in CODEX for information on alien races in the multiverse.  
> Please see "Kryptowiki: Cast and Crew" for a list of all characters. (upcoming)  
> Please see "Kryptowiki: Mechanical's Handbook" for a breakdown of key gear and ships.

**August 30, 2006 | Alex Danvers**

Northwest Iran

LuthorCorp Mineral Facility

 

(02:41am, Local Time)

 

A railgun round out of nowhere slams into Alex's ribcage, splintering on the armored fabric Kara gave her to wear under the suit. A flurry of barrier fields fire up and direct the shrapnel into the walls around her instead of into her skull.

"Hit the deck!" the SEAL on her right shouts.

Despite a series of alarms and error messages, the heads-up in her helmet reports that the suit's basic locomotion is still working. All she really needs to fight.

[Echo, what the hell? Best case, that should've trashed the suit and put me in unpowered mode. Worst case, I should have a hole in me.]

[Kara and Kolex overrode some of my systems, it appears. Nanosurgical augmentation has occurred at hard node one through six, the entire spinal node helix, and ten nodes in the abdomen and the legs. It must have been laid in over several months. Raw materials were passed in via food or possibly skin osmosis.]

_Best little sis ever._

[What, was it supposed to be a birthday surprise?]

[Echo?]

[Unknown. Alex, your body was changed in ways I did not approve of and cannot tell you about. The trust between me and my host has been violated. For a cybernetic AI, that trust is sacred.]

Pain dances up and down Alex's spine. She tries to get up and her right leg sends an incandescent blast up her body.

"Fuck!" she snarls.

[Is it broken?]

[No. Bruising, at most.]

[Are you sure, Echo?]

[Positive. Nothing broken. Just...in pain.]

[Get me team-wide.]

"This is White Knight. Fastballs on the field."

"Never fucking easy, is it?" Vasquez asks. "You got a twenty on him?"

"Negative. If it's even a human. Could be automated. I want Snowstorm personnel up front. We have a chance if we get sucker punched. The newbies and the civvies don't. Extreme caution at all times."

"Civvie?" the SEAL grumbles.

"Newbie," Alex coughs. "I've spent _months_ in this suit, you've spent ten hours."

[Alex, this is Vasquez.]

[Shoot.]

[There's a chop shop. Tons of torn-down wrecks. Might be able to get some portable cover that can take a fastball.]

[Get on it.]

"Slide me my weapon," Alex tells the nearest SEAL.

He kicks her railgun out of cover and into her hands.

"Keep your head down. There's something I always wanted to try."

[Echo, I need a computation.]

[Ooh! Math! I love math!]

[I want to fire all three barrels, using the soft shells. I want the fragments to richoet down and hit everything in this corridor. Enough to keep bouncing until they hit a flat surface straight on but not enough to punch through.]

[Stand by. Recommended settings and shells loaded. Aim point set for firing behind cover.]

A circle appears in her vision. It's crystal clear, meaning it's on her retina, not her suit's damaged HUD. Alex trains the weapon on it.

"One…two...three."

She exhales and pulls the trigger. A blizzard of red flecks charges down the corridor, leaving hundreds of tiny furrows of molten concrete.

_So Echo is scared too...she hates the idea of me using the thermite-blend rounds and she loaded them without asking._

Alex grabs a sensor pod from her belt and chucks it down the hallway. Lying in a pool of blood and sizzling body fat is a young man with armor plates cauterized into his skin. It's more advanced than the surgery at the missile silo, but barely. He can walk normally, which is an improvement. The grafting must be far more painful, however. The poor kid probably needed a morphine drip every night to sleep.

_Lex must've bribed some Russian general._

"Drone confirms. Shooter KIA," she tells her squad. "Extra crispy."

"Fuck...my...life," the sniper next to her murmurs.

"Yeah, I'm a fan of this gun…"

"What now, boss?"

Alex takes the offered hand and gets into a crouch. She turns back to mission-wide comms.

"We push forward. Sensor pods out ahead at each junction. Overwatch from the drones at all times. Kick open every door. When we leave this place, it's empty."

"Aye-aye."

Lillian's plan worked brilliantly, Alex will admit. Putting the office personnel on the front lines got most of them killed in the first few minutes. Anyone they actually capture will be a merc, someone tough enough to live this long but not someone with any useful info.

Lab after lab, it's the same. Table. Worn-out cutting tools. Vats with organs in them. She's seen bloodstains on the tables in all the colors of blood there are...except ordinary, dark red, _human_ blood.

She kicks open door 82-C. Alex sinks to her knees. Dead raxxie children--the bodies are too small for adults--are stacked here near a goddamned biowaste incinerator. The bodies are either mostly or all females, which saves a matching nightmare for door 82-D, more than likely.

"Black give you rest, little ones…" Alex whispers. "The waters bred no one braver."

" _Nidah_? _Nidah_? _Nidah?_ " someone whispers <"Mother" | Rakni-Xinda standard.>

"Cortez!" Alex bellows. "In here, double time!"

[Echo, give me something…]

[Stand by. A healthy Rakni-Xinda body temperature is low. WIth the furnace door open, it is indistinguishable from the room's background.]

" _Madre de dios_ ," Cortez whispers.

"Someone is alive in here," Alex chokes. "...and she needs our help. Shut the valves and kill the oven. Then we can start looking for body heat."

For several hours, they take turns lifting small, sliced-up bodies off the pile and they take turns vomiting.

 

 

Four arms burst from a pile of corpses and wrap around Alex's throat. Long fingers close around her windpipe.

"Do not shoot," she wheezes at the men.

" _Esholo…_ " Alex wheezes. <Peace… | Galactic standard.>

 _"Wer bist du?"_ <"Who are you?" | German _. >_

__

_"Scheiße,"_ Alex groans. <"Shit" or "fuck" | German.>

_It had to be a major European language I don't speak._

Alex plunges her arms into a slimy mass of cold skin and congealed blood and tries to feel for her opponent. Maybe if she can touch them, they'll know she's not a threat.

 _"Sie will dich retten. Sie ist eine Soldatin. Sie tötete. die Männer, die dich verletzt haben_ , _"_ Cortez replies. <"She wants to save you. She is a soldier. She killed the men who hurt you." | German>

Her attacker stops choking her but she doesn't let go...and soon it won't matter. There's enough raw power in these hands to choke her slowly on reflex alone.

"The fuck you speak German for?" laughs the sniper. "That a thing in El Paso?"

"My girl's German-Irish."

"Your wife's black, dude."

"Shut up," Alex hisses. "I don't care how you know it… Just use it."

"Tell her I'm going to lift her out."

 _"Sie wird dich rausheben."_ <"She is going to lift you out." | German>

"Sievers, you're on lookout. Anyone not ours comes by, light them up. Cortez, help me lift her out. Move slow. She's probably injured."

Before long, a teenaged raxxie slides free of the corpses and into Alex's arms. She's naked, coated in blood--hers and others--and not making a sound. Her eyes are badly damaged and she's not healing, either. It's not a matter of malnutrition, Alex soon realizes. It's deliberate.

"Who?" Alex wonders, stroking scarred-over eyes.

" _Nidah bik jagg._ " <"Mother did that." | Galatic standard.>

 _The right choice._ Alex realizes. _They haven't made enough therapy yet,_ _Not for what she went through. Being blind is one less way to be triggered._

Hopefully there's something she can do to reverse it once she has the poor girl in a hospital.

" _Lhovo_." <"Thank you." | Galactic standard>

"Emergency blankets, both of you. Now."

Both the SEALs rip open their gear bags and toss her the blankets and everything inside that might tie, cinch, velcro or hold something down. Alex fiddles with the blankets, her teeth and her K-Bar until she has what amounts to a two-piece bathing suit that zip-ties on.

"Ask her her name, Cortez. Her real name."

He does. What Alex gets is a melody of rolled consonants with a hiss at the end. It will take time to say that with a human mouth.

 _Gacc-u-al? No 'g' and 'j' distinction in raxxie standard. So...Jackal? Jackie? I suppose we'll use Jackie,_ Alex thinks.

"Jackie, I'm glad I found you."

No one says anything for a long time.

"Boss!" Vasquez shouts in her radio.

"Sitrep," Alex croaks.

"God...what did you _find_?" Vasquez wonders.

"Sitrep," Alex hisses, putting whatever she can still feel into a ball of rage. With that at her back, she has just enough strength left in her soul to speak above a whisper.

"We swept the base. All survivors are on their feet and under guard. The cargo pods are trashed. Looks like they weren't as EMP ready as we thought."

"Fuck. Options?"

_Do not say 'fight our way out of Iran', woman._

"You mean besides fighting our way out of Iran?" Vasquez chuckles. "You're no fun."

"I'm sane, Straightjacket."

"Yeah. No fun. Option two is I blow this hangar door off its hinges and we go shopping. Option three is the Air Force flying us out. Y'know...something boring."

[Echo, mission-wide and copy JSOC and POTUS.]

"This is White Knight. Operation Nightingale's Claw is a success. We have eliminated enemy contacts. We are securing transport. HVT-2 is in custody. HVT-1 is E-KIA. "

"Credit that to White Knight." Sievers adds.

"It was your kill," Alex whispers.

_Sniper who would not take credit for a shot like that? I don't think the bullet touched Lillian's hair. Just her brain._

"No, it wasn't," Sievers sighs. "I'm only here, doing this work, because of you. Now that I've seen it…  This is the only work worth doing, ma'am."

"JSOC confirms the kill.  HVT-1 is KIA by White Knight."

"Probably the best we could hope for, given her past," Obama sighs.  "Your nation thanks you."

"Thank you, sir. It was an honor."

Alex hauls herself to her feet on jellied legs and lifts Jackie into her arms.

"Blow the doors, Straightjacket."

[Echo, I want to address the Galactic Unity fleet. Can I do that?]

[Yes, as a member of a house on the Kryptonian Council, you have that right.]

[Mute the JSOC link and jam anyone who tries to go around me. Let me know when I'm ready, Echo.]

[Ready.  Audio?]

[Please.]

"This is Arch Commander Reyna of the Passionate Blade."

"Passionate Blade actual, this is White Knight. Change of plans. This is not a crime scene, it's a mass grave site. When our ships clear minimum safe distance, be ready to burn it."

"Gladly, White Knight."

"Thank you, Arch-Commander. Say the prayers," Alex begs. "For all of us."

"Live long, Earth-born."

"Krypton and Armali and Terran eternal," Alex replies before cutting the link.

[Put me back on mission-wide.]

"All fireteams, deploy all sensor pods and secondary drones. I want high-resolution images and samples of everything in this facility. Ice, put up a transmat beacon direct to Langley. In one hour, this place burns. Anyone has a problem with that and he can walk home. Unarmed."

"With you, ma'am," Demos replies. "Beacon will be up in fifteen."

"Gentleman defers to White Knight."

_What, Reynolds? Bit of FBI habit peeking through?_

"Barracks twelve is forever," Vasquez promises. "You heard the lady! Get the drones up," she snaps at her team.

* * *

 

 

**August 30, 2006 | Lena Luthor**

Rynnyta Jiatt ("Passionate Blade")

Blessing-class dreadnought and flagship of the Third Fleet of Armali High Command

80,000 kilometers distance to Earth (optimal weapons range)

 

Blue, white and purple heads turn as Lena dashes down the corridor. The sentry who was assigned to watch her breaks into a jog beside her.

"Where is she?" Lena screams.

A white blaze fills Lena's vision. She runs headlong into an operating table and ends up skidding along the sickbay floor. One of her heels flies off into what looks like an oven for cleaning sample tubes.

"Help her up," an officer demands.

Two soldiers kneel down beside her, hands outstretched.

"If you would, Lady Luthor?"

Scales tickle her palms as they grip her. Tiny scales that feel like the edge of a feather. The soldiers handle Lena like she were made of cotton candy as they help her up.

"Hi, babe," Kara croaks. "I think I ruined my hair."

She turns her head to face Lena, tears mixing with the blood in the cuts on her cheeks.

"I hate you," Lena sniffs.

"I know."

"Because I love you!" she wails.

"I know."

"I love you and I can't protect you and my family are monsters and these things keep happeni-"

She flings herself into Kara's embrace, pushing the surgeon out of the way.

"I'm just decorative," the surgeon grumbles. "No reason to worry about me."

"Lena? Honey?"

"Yes?" Lena sobs.

"Pain-wise, you're mashing your fist into her clitoral hood."

Lena jerks her hand back.

"I...didn't know."

The surgeon adjusts her coat, smoothes her hands over her crests and laughs.

"Humans never do. The first time, I ask them for a backrub...that trick does work _great_ on straight girls!"

"You're a menace," Kara groans. "Taking up all the Earth women. How have you even had a chance at shore leave since first contact?"

The surgeon licks her blue-scaled lips.

"Waiting for first contact is for _noisy_ people."

Kara waves her hand dismissively.

"Shoo. Go cause a couple more alien abduction documentaries on late-night TV."

"You _were_ flirting with me."

"I'm injured!" Kara complains. "Because I did something stupid. I flirt when I'm stupid."

Lena sniffs.

"She does."

Lena sinks back, laying her ear over Kara's heart.

"What did he do?"

"Lex?"

"Yes. Lex."

"Set a trap. I got around the trap but then I panicked getting away."

"Explain," Lena demands.

"He knew Kryptonite gas could hurt me so he rigged up a laser to drill my helmet and set up the reactor room with gas tanks. When I went in there to set off the self destruct nuke, it zapped my helmet visor and the gas turned on."

"That's terrible."

Kara sighs.

"Honestly if it weren't for the uranium plates in the walls, it would have been fine."

"What?"

"He put uranium studded with white sand granules in the walls. Wrapped in a low-grade version of his war suit armor. To punch through, I had to strike the uranium. Hard."

"Boom," Lena realizes. "He knew you could get out of it but that you wouldn't nuke people to do it. He wanted to use your kindness against you."

"Maybe so."

Lena looks up at Kara's face. More than anything, it looks like a big cat slashed her. Four long gouges running in parallel from forehead to chin.

"How'd you do it."

Kara chuckles.

"I pushed real slow, at first. Once I got that room airborne, I tried to get out of the atmosphere before I either died of poison or had to set it off. Partial success. When it detonated, I was in orbit. The EMP blast was obscured by the ships in orbit but it hit California, Hawaii, parts of South America."

After fumbling for Lena's hand, Kara finds it and squeezes tight.

"People got hurt, Lee. Because of my escape. Thousands probably. Kolex is still cataloging the damage to _me_ so I haven't had time to follow up."

Lena laughs softly.

"That part went great. By the time I got done why checking my computer wasn't turning on, those construction robots had deployed and started repairing power lines. Medical robots went to the home of anyone with a pacemaker. Which...how did you know?"

"Corporative network security is so slipshod," Kara jokes. "Part of Kleenex's job is to break locks and get at information in cases where that could save lives. It's siloed only in his chassis. So it's about as private as it ever was. I didn't tell him to exactly but he would have interpreted his general orders to do so."

"You _are_ a supervillian," Lena teases.

"I'm _your_ supervillian, Lena."

 

* * *

 

**August 30, 2006 | Alex Danvers**

Pacific Ocean

15,000 feet altitude

 

 _I needed a bit of crazy today,_ Alex realizes.

"You sure you know how to fly this thing?" Susan bellows.

"I'm sure!"

"Is this even a ship?" Demos demands.

"Technically!"

"It's technically missing a fucking cockpit," Cortez complains.

"Hang on…"

[Echo?]

[Stand by…]

[Echo!]

[I am attempting to brute force a black market AI created by some lunatic Coluan savant and reprogram its ship's hull. While in flight. I am operating at 137% of maximum compute load. Stand by!]

_Never heard Echo snippy like that._

The cracked dome of the bridge reforms as a swarm of crystalline cubes crawl over each other, linking end over end until they seal the gap. With the hole plugged, the roar of the wind fades.

"Well, that's fancy," Carlson manages to say.

"Coluan ship. Programmable parts," Alex replies. "We just had to program the glass back."

"Program it?" Sievers asks.

"Yeah. It's a swarm of tiny robots working together, just like an actual Coluan is."

"They're the silvery ones, right? With the LEGO-y skin?"

Alex laughs.

"That's a term I hadn't heard but I guess, yeah."

[Echo, you good?]

[Improving. Thank you for asking.]

Alex lifts herself out of the captain's chair and goes over to the ruins of the tactical console. The raxxie girl--Jackie--is shivering under the blanket.

"Hey," Alex whispers.

Leaning close to the translator, Jackie speaks into it in what must be a local dialect of raxxie standard.

"Why did you save me?" a robotic voice asks.

_Fuck._

"Because I couldn't leave you there."

"Why not?"

"Because it isn't human to leave people suffering."

"Humans left me there! They killed my mother! They...my sister...."

Jackie has been unable to say her sisters name the entire time even though Alex is positive that the description matches another raxxie teenager recovered alive.

"I know. Nothing can change that...nothing brings her back. Do you have someone to take care of you?  Someone kind?"

"All the kind people I know are on Starhaven or dead."

_I'm going to ask Maggie. Tonight. Maybe it's too fast but...what kind of person am I if I don't?_

"Boss!" Vasquez hollers. "Problem."

"It's the day for those," Alex groans.

She hurries over to the sensor panel where Vasquez is tracing something with her finger.

"Contact," Alex agrees. "Big one."

"Intercept course?" Vasquez wonders.

Alex taps on the display to magnify it.

"Fuck."

She dives for the captain's chair.

"Everyone grab something!"

The wingtip of a 747 scrapes the top of the hull, shattering a few of the cubes in the glass. The airliner plunges past them, the flaps in its wings stuck in random positions.

"Damage report," Alex demands.

"Engines are screwed," Demos replies. "Cutting in and out."

[Echo?]

[Mechanically, the ship is fine. Mentally…]

[Ah.]

[Yes. Ah. Stop! I said no!]

Alex has never had a reason to force herself to ignore Echo's presence before. Some dim instinct told her that whatever digital wrestling match Echo was engaged in was not for her to interrupt.

"Landing options?"

Reynolds looks up.

"Nothing but water."

"Shit."

"This thing can't land in water?"

"It'll land fine. I'm not sure when we'll get it moving again or if it'll sink," Alex explains.

"Screw that plan."

"Attention, unidentified aircraft. This is Dagger-4. Turn around or we will open fire."

"Get me a channel."

"Dagger-4, this is a JSOC mission using a makeshift civilian aircraft. I am Operative Danvers, US Space Corps. I can authenticate."

"Negative, Danvers. No need.  Light is green."

"We could use an escort to the nearest landing strip."

"Stand by."

Alex waits, her knuckles sore on the controls as the altitude drops a few hundred feet a second.

"USSC spacecraft, this is the tower. Flight deck is clear. Wreckers are standing by. Turning on our transponder now."

"Reynolds, get me a path to that signal!"

On screen, Alex sees the blurry outline of what looks like a massive hovercraft topped in concrete with a lopsided bow and holding clamps for small aircraft on top.

"Is that…" Cortez asks.

"It has to be. CVN-65. Says so on the deck," Reynolds replies.

"Can't be…"

"I did read that it wasn't going to the museum fleet.  No one said why."

"So they…"

"I guess, yeah."

"Makes sense," Reynolds admits. "Older design. Sturdy. Eight reactors, not two. Easier to start on a hull with so much empty space."

"Navy boy," Vasquez teases.

"Are _you_ going to turn down a flying aircraft carrier right now?"

"Hell no," Vasquez laughs. "I'm giving you shit for having the number memorized."

"They made us learn it at Annapolis!"

"Someone fill me in!" Alex bellows.

It's not her team who answers.  It's the woman at the other end.

"Operative Danvers, this is Captain Lane, United States Navy. We're bringing the _Enterprise_ up to 11,000 feet and matching your airspeed. Do you need piloting assistance?"

_Just a drug test. I am not seeing things...right?_

"Is this just because of the TV show? Is that why they did it?" Alex demands.

Unprofessionally.

"No. It's the Navy. Do you really think we'd get rid of a ship named USS _Enterprise?"_


	33. OVER THE WIRE: Breaking News From CatCo Worldwide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "OVER THE WIRE" is a series of sound bites from news broadcasts or political speeches, or giving a glimpse of other newsworthy events around the world over a period of time.

###  **September 2, 2006 | Barack Obama**

The White House 

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC 

Oval Office 

 

There are many things more interesting than listening to Senator McConnell drone on and on about "thugs" and "lunatics".  One or two root canals, in particular, stand out as better memories.

_Just say it, man!  Say that she's black.  It's like his brain is constipated._

A mish-mash of carefully minced words and insincere smiles and sincere loathing provide the base track and the tick of the clock brings the rhythm...such as it is.

"No," Obama finally says.

"Beg pardon?"

"No, Mitch.  Whatever you're pitching...I won't sign it.  Twenty four thousand people's pacemakers stopped, all at once.  Should have killed them. Except that plans were in place. Only three hundred died.  Hundreds of open-chest surgeries safely performed in hours. A medical miracle by any reading."

"From an accident _she_ created."

"Accidents have always been, Mitch.  Bridges have always fallen over. If there's someone who wants to catch cars before they hit the water -- unpaid work, I might add -- more power to her.  To them."

"So I can tell the American people you will ignore fifty billion dollars in property damage rather than be politically incorrect?  Rather than oppose the Justice League and their Hollywood backers? You'd rather let foreign terrorists and illegals get away with murder in exchange for a photo op?"

"Lex Luthor's white, last I checked.  Born in Boston. It was his bomb."

McConnell laughs a truly disturbing sight.

"Well, do you really think th-"

"Lex would not have attacked aliens if they didn't exist, true.  But your ancestors wouldn't have needed slave patrols and lynch mobs if my ancestors hadn't run away to freedom, Mitch."

"Now look here…"

Stabbing his phone for intercom, Obama grins at Mitch.

"Get me Miss Nal, please."

"Of course, sir."

"And I want an update from the Joint Chiefs and NASA about the ships in orbit.  One last thing, Senator McConnell will need a ride back to the Senate Office Building."

He hangs up.

"If you'll excuse me, Mitch...I have to play politics on a scale no one ever has imagined."

The indigo-haired NASA staffer with the 'stealth punk' fashion sense is waiting in the doorway.  Nia is behind her, not exactly hiding but not drawing any attention.

"I have a direct line to the Unity flagship, Mister President," the NASA admin reports.

McConnell offers his hand.

"Mister President."

Obama shakes it.

"Mister Speaker."

 

* * *

 

###  **September 2, 2006 | Television Viewers**

 

 

> **Behind the anchor, a pair of dots dance in the sky, green and gray.  They collide and spin away from each other and collide again. Each impact sends a shockwave across the beach, blowing the palm fronds back and frothing the teal water.**
> 
> **"Terror and confusion in Bahamas, today as a previously unknown supervillian has attacked The Green Lantern.  Despite an appearance by Superman, the battle still rages. We go now to our expert on Metahumans, Doctor Harol-"**
> 
> **"Get down!" the cameraman screams.**
> 
> **A mass of green light strikes the beach, kicking up a cloud of sand.**
> 
> **"Humans, stand aside!" bellows a voice from the sky.  "I will speak to my prisoner. You will not interfere."**
> 
> **"Keep the camera on them," the anchor whispers.**
> 
> **With a crack of supersonically displaced air, a female figure appears, hovering just over the sand.  A tight-fitted suit of woven cable clings to her body and in the center of her chest is a symbol: three triangles, each perfect on two sides and shattering on a third.**
> 
> **Her swarthy face is all but hidden by a grim mask.  Black metal. No curves, only flat planes. A few gleaming red mechanisms are all that break up what would otherwise be a second skull worn on the outside.**
> 
> **Never letting her feet touch the sand, she approaches the motionless, bloodied form of the Green Lantern.  Wrapping her hand around his wrist, she jerks him off the ground and holds the ring close to her face.**
> 
> **"Tyrants of Oa!" she bellows.  "Answer me or your puppet dies!"**
> 
> **The lantern groans.  His red hair is matted with mud and seawater and blood trickles from three large cuts on his forehead.**
> 
> **"Don't know what you're talking about, lady."**
> 
> **"You are meaningless, human."**
> 
> **"That's not a real nice thing to say," he chuckles.**
> 
> **"It is true.  The ring deceives you.  The ring needs a wearer but its makers need slaves."**
> 
> **She pinches the ring between her fingers.**
> 
> **"Speak, Oans."**
> 
> **A voice spills from the man's mouth, far louder and deeper than his own.**
> 
> **"We have no business with monsters.  We will not parley with you."**
> 
> **"You will deal with me through him, or you will deal with me as I stand atop the smoking ruins of your own cities. Krypton. Did you do it?"**
> 
> **The voice laughs.**
> 
> **"Krypton died of its own sicknesses."**
> 
> **"You knew.  It was your business to know.  You knew the planet was dying."**
> 
> **"We did."**
> 
> **"And you did not act?  You saw no justice in rescuing billions?"**
> 
> **"Krypton was a rogue factor.  Too powerful to make peace with but too influential to attack.  Its destruction simplifies our task."**
> 
> **Fire licks over the woman's skin, searing the Lantern's hand.**
> 
> **"Did this ring, or any of its bearers, living or dead...participate?"**
> 
> **"Yes.  A pre-"**
> 
> **She closes her fist, blood spraying from between her fingers.  Screams echo up and down the beach. She drops the man's hand--little more than skin and bloody paste--and pockets the cracked ring.**
> 
> **Along with a short knife, vial of blue jelly is placed in front of him.**
> 
> **"Enough to grow back the hand...once you have a stump to work with.  If you can take the pain."**
> 
> **With another sonic boom, she is gone.**
> 
> **After staring wordlessly at the camera for a long time, the anchor finally brings herself to speak.**
> 
> **"A powerful new threat.  Shocking accusations of genocide, allegedly committed by the heros known the Green Lanterns.  We will look into those issues after the break. As always, stay with CatCo for stories no one else can sniff out."**
> 
>   
> 

 

* * *

 

###  **September 2, 2006 | Kara Danvers**

Rynnyta Jiatt ("Passionate Blade") 

Blessing-class dreadnought and flagship of the Third Fleet of Armali High Command 

2,000 kilometers distance to Earth (surface support / medical evacuation range) 

 

The cabin the officers put her up in is palatial.  Ridiculous. More suited to a dirt-side embassy than a warship.  Kara remembers her aunt Astra saying that Thessalian ships are where everyone sleeps four to a bunk so that there can be a tropical garden aboard.

Dawn has filtered through the transparent hull plating four times since Kara woke up. She turned the opacity up so that Lena could sleep.  She is curled close against Kara's side, hair everywhere, makeup wiped off. This is pure Lena.   

"Lena," she whispers.  "Wake up."

As she does, Lena stretches, putting her left hand close enough that Kara can grab it and kiss each fingertip.  Thumb to pinky and then back again.

"Mmm," Lena groans.  "Morning."

"Morning is relative in space, babe."

"No, Kara.  It's not. You're in my bed.  I slept well. It's morning. It's a _good morning_.  Don't ruin it for me with orbital mechanics."

Kara kisses the top of Lena's head.

"Fair enough.  Can I ask a question?"

"A second one, you mean?"

"Yes.  I want to ask a second question, now that I wasted my first one so foolishly."

"Yes, love."

"Come with me to Midvale.  Let's run away. Eliza will put us up, I'm sure and you can get to know the place."

Lena's eyebrow arches.

_That's just not fair.   Words cannot match her eyebrows._

"I want…" Kara sighs.

"I want more of you in my life.  I want you in more parts of my life, I should say.  We meet people back home and learn my stupid family traditions.  We can stay for Yom Kippur. You can help me with my homework. Probably don't want to flunk my chat with the _Beth Din_."

Lena opens her mouth to say something.  Kara puts a finger under the chin and slowly closes it.

"And don't lie.  You have the vacation time built up."

"Do your homework, eh?" Lena teases.  "That's supposed to be charming? You have no clue how to talk to women, do you?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh-oh! Looks like Worldkillers don't take kindly to conspiracies against Krypton. But who was that masked woman? Are all the spreadsheets correct??? Did someone pick Ruby up from soccer practice??? Only time will tell.


	34. Just Slap a Little K-Y On It!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":  
> Where Kara is wet-the-bed scary to Nazis, if Twitter won't shut them up, she will, Alex has some bad news, Eliza can't deal with this too, Maggie is sassy, Lena is soft and snuggled, and there are fringe benefits to evil parents.
> 
> OUR NEXT EXCITING EPISODE:  
> Where Sam and Ruby make a successful Stealth check, Kara sets a trap, there is a limit to mercy, overcompensating neo-Nazis don't think it through, the woods are lovely, dark and deep, there are consequences (and puns) for one's actions, and Lena gets some hate mail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE #1:  
> If, at any point in her life, Lyudmila Pavlichenko carried a wallet, I hope it said "Bad-Ass Motherfucker" on it. Accepted as the most lethal female sniper in history, she had 309 confirmed kills of Nazi soldiers, including 36 enemy snipers. One of roughly 2,000 female snipers the Soviet Union used in the war, she was pulled from the front at 309 kills after being wounded and sent on a propaganda tour, where she befriended Eleanor Roosevelt. When asked by a (no doubt "shook") Eleanor what she did in the war, she replied "sniper" and said she had killed 309 Nazi soldiers. Once it was clear that was not a translation error, Eleanor asked how she coped with killing so many men. She replied: "No men. Just fascists." Unlike most highly decorated soldiers after the war, she was not executed during Stalin's paranoid tailspin. She finished her degree in history and worked as a researcher at Naval HQ in Moscow, among other roles. She died in 1974. [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyudmila_Pavlichenko ]
> 
> The SVT-40 rifle given to her before her propaganda tour is the one Kara has stolen by Catwoman. It was not used in combat, to history's knowledge, but was state of the art at the time. Kara knows the importance of history, so what other gun is she going to shove in this little weasel's face?

###  **September 7, 2006 | Trinity Jornada**

Eureka, California

Galaxy Games Production Facility

Trinity's right hand seizes and scrabbles against the table, claw-like.

She lifts the hammer, turning her eyes to the pin-up calendar.  It's vintage...Alberto Vargas. The art that got Johnny Yank through World War II. 

He'd spare some time for a quick rub to a faded, stained postcard of a milk-white, ruby lipped vision.  Tits like igloos and curves like question marks. Glossy curls. Probably smoking a cigarette, the hot red tip the only color on the page besides her lipstick.  The kind of women who were desired from the first cave paintings right up until 1970 or so. The kind of smut that they don't make any more...built to last.

_Time to see if tits and ass count as anesthetic._

She brings the hammer down as hard as she can across the top of her hand.

_Nope.  Still hurt like a motherfucker._

"Shock detected.  Diagnostic mode engaged," reports a synthesized voice behind her left ear.

"Fuck, yeah!" Trinity crows.

She pulls out her phone, unwrapping the connector she keeps duct-taped to the back and slips it into the connector on the tip of her ring finger.  Plopping the phone on its charging mat, she jabs the reset button and then selects 'right arm' and 'motor functions'. A few droplets of beta-endorphins are squirted into her brain.

"What have I told you about loading pirated software into your augmentations?" teases a voice from behind her.

"Boss!" Trinity sputters.  

Trinity scrambles to cover the calendar but before she can find the right stack of paperwork, Superwoman has sped over to it, lifting the pages with an armored finger.

"Rao," she breathes.  "These are beautiful...so much better than what's out online."

"Yeah…" Trinity coughs.  "Well, we can't all wake up to a ruby-lipped, snowy-skinned Irish rose snoring on the other pillow."

Kara smiles.

"No, _you_ most definitely can't.  And I think she might go full Lex if people found out she snores."

Trinity exhales.  Her boss _approves_ of her porn stash...rather than firing her for smiling at the bougie housewives coming in to get their cars fixed, as her last boss did.

"You had a rough week.  Nuke to the face, interstellar crisis...  How's every little thing?"

"Spent lots of time with my lady so...just super."

They look at each other for a moment then break out laughing.

Trin throws her arms around Kara, her savior, her employer, her reason for giving a flying fuck about other human beings.  

"You smell _amazing_ ," Trinity mumbles.

"Ozone.  From flying.  I basically ionize the air around me at all times.  Gives me that cool breeze at 50,000 feet freshness."

Kara sighs.

"So I was going to start with my question, but first let's get that hand of yours tuned."

"It _is_ my girl's favorite ride."

 

 

Kara clinks the hard cider against Trinity's water bottle.

"Cheers.  So. Tell me what's bothering you."

Trinity waves her robot hand at the sensor and the displays built into the wall light up.

"These are real-time comments in the Galaxy Games forums.  Anonymized."

Kara stands and steps back so she can take it all in.

 

**User1:  This is amazing.**

**User2:  Thanks!**

**User3:  Someone give them all the money!  We need more gay shit in video games.**

 

"That's the good.  Ready for the bad?"

 

**User1:  You know she sucked a truckload of cock for that review.**

**User2:   Let's see her get that award after I rape her bloody.**

**User1:   Brave man.**

**User3:   American hero.  Willing to fuck a cow to save our country!**

**User4:   I'm starting a GoFundMe for the medical bills to disinfect his dick.**

 

"You get the idea."

"Give it to me," Kara breathes.  "All of it. Max playback speed, tile the monitors."

"You can't really…follow that can you?"

"Do it!" Kara snaps.

 _"Rao, whose eye sees all, who speaks only truth..."_ Kara whispers.

The world stops moving.  Everything except her target--the display bank--is motionless.  The hum and whine of electrons in the circuits reaches her ears.  The light bleeding off the backlights of the displays halos each monitor.

[Kolex, you're backup.  Grab everything.]

[On it, Lady Kara.]

"Go."

Tens of thousands of windows open, steaming a hundred thousand user comments in the last hour, then a million this week until they've played back a half-billion in the months the forums opened.

"Hold it there," Kara commands.

 

 

Paused on screen is a swastika photoshopped on to her childhood home and in the front window, someone has photoshopped her mother's picture from her university bio, cropped it to look like a severed head and placed on a spike with a Star of David scrawled on it.

**Kike.  Dyke. Nigger.  Take back our games.  Take back our country.**

"When was this?" Kara demands.  "When was it posted!" she bellows.

"Three days ago.  The subroutine flagged it for review.  Three hundred nine clicks before it got pulled.  I'm sorry, boss."

Kara taps her ear.  It's symbolic but humans see it as the action of turning on a radio.

"Monitoring post at location Alpha-One.  Helmet feed only."

[Activating the overwatch drone in Midvale.]

High atop the weathervane at city hall, a cloaked drone turns its sensor array to face 314 Birch Lane.  All that can be seen is a barrier shield, one Kara installed when she was fifteen and upgraded when she fired up the fabbers at Sanctuary.

It is as impervious to cameras, sensors and radar as it would be to a five-petaton blast from an antimatter warhead.

The defense shield irises briefly, creating a pinhole for the sensors.  

"Tune cameras for thermo-optical range.  Magnify."

Eliza is in her upstairs study in the recliner.  The blue shape on her lap must be a book, a bit colder than room temperature.  Pale purple from its greater heat, an IV bag hangs beside her.  

"Vital sign estimate."

Kara exhales.  Eliza is alive, well and flipping through this quarter's Journal of Exoplanetary Genetics.  Several pages are dog-eared.

[Blue Beetle.  De-crypt and de-anonymize their forum records.]

[May I…] Kolex begins.

[May I remind you of Shae El-Ze and her writings on the virtues of pacifism?]

[First thing tomorrow.  Right now I am Ktharra Zor-El.  Worldkiller.]

[I see.  Records uploaded.  May your fist be swift and your courage unbroken, Lady of the Empire.]

_Did he...learn the old prayers?_

Kara offers her hand.

"Thank you, Trinity.  I had no idea."

"Anytime, Kara.   I owe you and not just for some sweet metal body parts."

Kara triggers her faceplate.  Ninety percent opacity. All these men will see is a nightmare.  All black. Merciless. With eyes of blood-red flame.

A moment before she takes flight, she hears Trinity.

"Give 'em hell, woman."

 

* * *

**September 7, 2006 | Selina Kyle ("Catwoman")**

Overton, New Jersey 

 

A dark figure in a green peacoat waits at the other end of the parking garage.

"Catwoman, a pleasure to meet you."

"Superwoman."

Selina chuckles.  Pearly whites and plump lips.

"I see why the Bat likes you," Kara jokes.

"I'll lap up a bowl of cream," Selina purrs.  "Quick as I'll pounce on a mouse."

Kara laughs.

"Good to know you swat both ways.  Taken."

"File it for future reference."

Selina gently lays the bag on the hood.

"This it?"

"In the flesh.  Well, in the wood and metal."

Kara peels the bag back.

"She's gorgeous."

"Ahem.  That was hanging in the _Kremlin,_ Kara.  Not sitting by the register at a 7-11."  

Kara nods.

"Gear's in the trunk along with a thank you.  Enjoy the ride."

Kara tosses a key fob at her.  Selina clicks it, looking around.  In the far corner, a ridiculous sports car chirps.

"Spyder," Kara tells her.  "They only make a dozen a year.  Few...personal upgrades. I did my best on the suit but if you need to, there's a rework stylus, mutation seed for the crystal parts and some instructions."

Selina shivers.

"That's a two million dollar car, Kara.  Before whatever spacey-wacey weirdness you put into it."

"Is it?" Kara asks, finger on her chin.  "Silly me. I heard about Raggedy Ann."

_Best getaway car a girl could ask for.  Miss you, babe…_

She pats Selina on the shoulder as she walks past. 

"After all, Superwoman can't be caught putting two million in a thief's bank account."

As she opens the door, Selina muses on where she can sell this car on the quick.

"Greetings, Ms. Kyle.  My name is Alice."

A holographic representation of a Siamese appears, lazing on the instrument panel.

"How may I assist you today?" the holographic kitten asks.

"Directions to Wayne manor, please."

"On or off the grid?"

"What?  You can…"  

She inhales.

"'Course you can.  Look who built you."

"Off-grid, please.  Avoid known speed traps."

Alice meows and swats playfully at a button hidden on the gearshift.

"What's that girl?  I should press this button?"

She clicks it and the hood disappears.  Where the engine should be, Selina can instead read the number painted on the wall of the garage.

"Cloaking device active.  Flight system available. Artificial intelligence control assist and predictive crash avoidance activated."

"Wait, what?"

"Recalculating maximum safe speed."

_One hundred twenty-three miles an hour, here to Gotham?  You're fucking on!_

Glancing into the backseat, she sees a garment bag with what looks like her old, original catsuit zipped into it, complete with rope, cable, climbing spikes, claws, and bullwhip.  What looks like a taser's prongs are sizzling at the end of the bullwhip.

"I am so keeping this car."

Selina throws it into reverse, aligns with the ramp and hits the gas. Nanite-laced tires bite the pavement as surely as a pneumatic drill.  She peels out, engine roaring, Alice meowing and music thumping.

Discarded newspapers form a fluttering cloud in her wake.

 

* * *

 

###  **September 7, 2006 | Hunter Masser**

Newark, New Jersey

 

A clicking sound wakes Hunter up.  Fan on the computer must be acting up again.

As he tries to sit up, something digs into his cheek.  He flicks the light on.

"Hi, Hunter."

Looking down, he sees what's digging into his cheek.  The bayonet on an old-style rifle. Looks like she bought it used, judging by the pockmarks.

"S-s-Superwoman.  Hi."

"Hi.  Do you know what this is?"

"N-n-no."

"This is Lyudmilla Pavlichenko's rifle.  An SVT-40 with a custom stock and optics. Soviets gave this to her after the Battle of Odessa. The last woman who touched this trigger…"

Superwoman curls her finger against it.

"Killed three hundred and nine Nazis.  This gun, however, is a virgin. I found it in a museum in the Kremlin.  A holy relic, if you will. The next in a legacy."

She smiles.

"Say hi to Mila."

"H-Hi," he mumbles, gently stroking the barrel.

"I think Mila's waited long enough, don't you?"

She trains the rifle on his cheek.  He can see her eye through the telescopic sight.

"Who gave you the address?"

"I'll never tell, you stupid dy-"

 

Everything hurts.  Something smells like burnt flesh.  Feathers are drifting around the room and the smell of gunpowder is heavy in the air.  There's a warm trickle coming from his ear. Blood, he supposes.

"Wake up, asswipe."

"Fuuuuck."

"Dude, I wouldn't fuck you with a rancid watermelon."

He tries to jump out of bed, meeting Superwoman's fist halfway up.

"Brod ma nobe, kazy bibh."

"Name.  Now. Or we go for three hundred ten."

She works the bolt, dropping out a smoking shell casing nearly as long as his hand.  

"Wait!" he calls out.

Talking hurts.  Fuck, talking hurts...but she's clearly ready to shoot him.

"Jacob.  Jacob Spencer."

"Not Richard?" she demands, driving him back with the bayonet's tip.  "Milo Ya-Yano….Milo Whatshisfuckingame?"

"They just do TV interviews," Hunter groans.

She turns around, aims at his computer and fires.  Solid steel blasts through the glass enclosure and out the other side, crumpling the motherboard and the steel frame like tissue paper with the raw velocity.

"Your internet privileges are suspended, Hunter.  Don't make me come back."

With a blinding flash of blue and white, she's gone.  

"Fuck."

Now he has to explain a broken computer, a hole in the wall behind his headboard, and a pissed-on set of bedsheets to his mom.

 

* * *

###  **September 9, 2006 | Lena Luthor**

Midvale, Maryland 

319 Birch Lane 

The Danvers Household 

 

 **  
** "Lee, babe, wake up."

"Timeisit?" Lena croaks.

"Like, three in the morning.  You've been out for a while. You fell asleep right around Arkansas.  Which...smart move."

The motion that had lulled her to sleep is gone.  Lena looks around. A three car garage, with one stall taken up by an aluminum sailboat badly in need of fresh ropes for the rigging and the engine half-stripped.  Old refrigerator with chipped paint. Three bicycles, all of them adult sized but only one of them in good repair. Basketball hoop against the back wall, faded plastic almost cracked in half.

"This is it?" Lena asks, afraid to know.

_Let it be.  Let this cluttered garage be hers.  Let there be one thing about her that's no so perfect it terrifies me._

"Yeah," Kara whispers.  "My mom's asleep, I'm sure.  Let's be quiet."

Lena nods.

"Abby," she whispers.  "Be quiet, all right?"

Abby squawks.

"Four different sheriffs pulled me over," Kara whispers. "Not one of them went through the motions once they saw Abby snoring on your shoulder or Kerry coughing sparks all over the back seat."

"Is he..."

"He's good.  Just breathed in too much scale dust.  I rubbed some lotion onto him...for whatever reason, they loathe kiwi fruit.  The smell should keep him from picking at it. I set him and Clare up at the rookery on the beach."

Kara scratches the scales just behind Abby's crown.

"Good dragon, scaring  all those cops straight.  Who's a good dragon…"

Lena rolls her eyes.

"I need more sleep, Kara.  Take me to bed."

"Well, if you put it that way…"

Lena finds herself in Kara's old bedroom, tiny wisps of lightning dancing off her hair, her fingertips, the buttons on her shirt.

"Kolex," Kara whispers.  "Adaptive sound cancellation.  Block anything that's under one hundred sixty decibels."

The speaker by the bedside powers up but no sound comes through.

"Kara, what?"

Then Lena sees Kara's eyes.  Pupils blown wide. Red fire dancing inside her golden irises.  Something wild is inside Kara's mind.  

This woman isn't the hero, standing up to some monstrous alien or costumed criminal like it's a snotty clerk at Target.  

This isn't the wide-eyed scientist, laughing at every pathetic nerd joke Lena tells.

This is new.

"This is the first place I wanted to kiss a girl," Kara pants.  "But I didn't get the chance. Please."

Kara's fingertip rests on Lena's lower lip.  Lena lashes her tongue around it, draws it in and sucks.  She lies back, crooking her fingers.

"Fuck me, Kara Zor-El.  Fuck me the way you wanted to fuck her."

 

Lena wakes to the sound of laughter downstairs and to Kara's warm, wet breath on her cheek.  Deep sleep. Steady puffs.

The sheets must have been changed after she fell asleep because they're dry and they should be soaked.  A trickle of her own slickness still lingers between her legs, renewed when Kara's dream-induced motions pull Lena in closer.

One meaty, silky-smooth arm is tight around her middle and the other is under Lena's head.  Now that she's awake, she realizes that it _hurts,_ just a tiny bit.  Kara's muscles are deliciously firm, even idle and asleep.  She shifts her cheek so that it rests on the inside of the forearm, rather than against the bicep.

Sleep takes her again.

 

 

Lena rolls over, hoping to find a sleeping Kara.  Instead she finds a small black cat, who immediately swipes -- claws held in -- at her nose.

"Nice to meet you too," Lena grumbles.

Someone thumps up the stairs.  Kara, most likely. When she's home--here or her apartment or Lena's penthouse--she moves less cautiously and her bulk makes her noisy.

"Streaky?" Kara calls out.

"You better not be bothering Lena, you silly cat."

Lena grabs the cat behind the neck, ignoring the irritated hiss.  Once the animal hangs slack, she moves her thumb across the top of the head.  Streaky's irritated snarls fade to whines and finally to a steady purr. Now that she's Sluggish, Lena can put streaky down on the bed and step back without getting clawed.

"Evil little creature," she jokes.  "Surprising we don't get along better."

"In here, Kara."

"Did she go after you?" Kara asks, rubbing Lena's nose with her thumb.

"Didn't beak the skin.  We came to an...arrangement."

"I see that," Kara jokes.  "You're never getting that coat back, by the way."

Lena wheels around.  A silver and blue designer hoodie is rapidly turning dirty gray as Streaky cleans her back leg, gradually spreading jet-black hairs.

"Thieves," Lena grumps.  "All you Danvers are thieves."

"All right, miss grumpy-stilettos…"

Kara scoops Lena up.  No matter how many times this happens, it steals Lena's breath away.  One moment, she's on her feet and the next--before _time_ moves--she's cradled in the arms of a goddess.  Enough to forgive the way the static charge from superspeed messes with her hair.

"Breakfast?" Lena yawns.

"Breakfast."

Lena isn't allowed to stand, apparently.  She is placed on the couch, covered in a throw blanket and barraged with a bowl of oatmeal, a bowl of fruit and a stack of toast.  Kara sits beside her, holding out a coffee cup that says "CEO-ILF" which was probably custom ordered.  

Meaning Lena may have to have someone killed.

Kara kisses her cheek.

"Morning, babe."

"Morning, _gra mo chroi._ "

A tear trickles down Kara's cheek.

"Darling," Lena stammers. "What's wro- _mmm!_ "

Kara's palms close around Lena's cheeks and kisses land on Lena's lips and her nose and both cheeks and her forehead and finally, on each of her eyes.

"You called me _gra mo chroi._ "

"You call me that all the time, Kara."

"And it's the first time you've spoken _Galiege_ back."

"Is...that…" Lena pauses, scraping her memory.  "I guess it might be."

"Is everyone decent?" calls a voice from the next room.

"Maggie!" Alex hisses.

"Alex...it's fine." Eliza scolds.

"Come in," Lena calls out.

Maggie Sawyer dressed down and Maggie Sawyer are really the same creature.  One just carries a sidearm. The motorcycle jacket, the gray T-shirt, the black sports bra peeking out...Lena's seen these exact pieces every time she's had dinner with Alex and Maggie.

Alex Danvers, on the other hand, is nigh-unrecognizable in a relaxed state.  In a loose turtleneck whose over-long sleeves cover her hands and a pair of Midvale High sweatpants and her hair shaken down into messy sheets rather gelled or combed into its usual swoop...she looks nothing like the other Alexes.  Soldier. Suspicious older sister. Cop's girlfriend. Motorcycle fanatic. None of those Alexes are the same as this person...can't be.  

"Have a seat, mom," Kara offers, patting the remaining cushion.  "You sex weasels can have the loveseat."

"I'll take that wager," Maggie chortles.

Alex settles in.  Almost immediately, Maggie clutches her and rests her head on Alex's shoulder.

"So…" Alex sighs.  "This is hard."

"What's wrong, sweetie?" Eliza asks.

Something in Lena's gut clenches.  

"Dad's…" Alex sighs.  "Dad's not dead. Or if he is, they never found the body."

"No," Eliza murmurs, shaking her head.  "No. Alex...I can't."

Lena grabs Eliza's hand and squeezes tight.

"The contact we have at the FBI sent me his file, ma.  Dad's lungs and liver were median weight for a man his age.  And when I say median, I mean _on the fucking dot,_ right out of Grey's Anatomy.  What's more...zero scarring, zero cirrhosis.  Like a man who never smoked or drank _once_ in his entire life."

"What?" Eliza murmurs.

"It wasn't him, mom.  Cloned body, we think."

"My mother," Lena says immediately.  "She did this."

"What?" Kara demands.  The hurt in Kara's voice makes Lena's ribs ache.

"I…" Lena sighs.  "I've been thinking.  I think my mother's still alive out there and from what you're telling me, she may have cloned herself.  Maybe your dad was a test to see if they could clone a complete body, I don't know. But knowing that a man who was raising a Kryptonian heir-of-house was 'killed'..."

Lena makes quotes with her fingers.

"And then realizing he wasn't?  Too convenient."

"What does this have to do with your mother?"

"If she's dead...why hasn't CADMUS used her as a martyr in propaganda?" Lena asks.  "Why wouldn't fanatics recruit with their dead leader's face? Her speeches? Because Lillian, or a clone, or an AI copy, or _something_ is busy carrying out her plans and doesn't want attention."

"That doesn't make…" Alex mumbles.

"Well..."  Maggie adds.

Eliza just shrugs.

Out of nowhere, Kara plants a kiss on Lena's temple.

"Mwah!  You are so cute when you're evil."

"Evil adjacent," Lena whines.

 

* * *

 

###  **September 10, 2006 | Kara Danvers**

Midvale, Maryland

319 Birch Lane

The Danvers Household

 

Kara keeps the phone close to her ear.

"We ready, Trin?"

A few keys clack at the other end.

"Girl, say the word and you are coast to coast."

"The dragnet?"

"Got a few questions about the nature of reality, but it's good to go."

Kara chuckles.

"To be expected, I suppose."

Trin sucks in a breath.

"We really doing this, boss?  Seems kinda cruel. I mean, bringing the memories of millions of people back from the dead, for this?"

Kara sighs.

"Tolovak was a military installation, Trin.  Before Brainiac-1 bottled them up, these people were soldiers on a piece-of-shit moon in the asscrack of the galactic core.  It's why we didn't nuke their consciousnesses like the rest of the tainted data. We're offering them a new way to protect a civilian population.  We're not forcing them."

Trinity sighs.

"That makes sense.  You still want to call this project K-Y?"

Kara laughs.

"If you're going to piss these guys off, piss them all the way off."

She sets her phone down, propping it against the book she was reading. 

"On five, Trin."

When she's done, Kara hits stop and then switches back to the phone app.

"Short and sweet," Trin replies.

"Save it and let Kleenex tidy it up.  Ready for the next one."

"Hang on."

Trinity switches on the camera on her phone, showing a bag of popcorn and a soda in her hands and a pair of 3-D glasses on her face.

* * *

###  **September 10, 2006 |  Video posted to www.youtube.com, www.cnn.com, www.foxnews.com, www.msnbc.com and other sites**

 

"Greetings.  My name, as you are probably aware, is Kara Zor-El.  But _you_ can call me Superwoman," she jokes.

"The other day, I found some internet hate groups posting some disgusting things about people I love.  I actually called the CEO of Twitter about it. He said there was nothing he could do."

"Not sure how he got to be the CEO of Twitter, because it's only been three days and we have a fix.  If anyone has been targeted by these scumbags, you can go to this address...

[ **https://krav.maga** ](https://krav.maga)

To download a browser plugin or phone app that connects to an AI cluster specifically designed to identify, catalog, target and report hate speech on the internet.  If they make fake accounts, we'll find them. If they misspell words to beat filters on racial slurs, we'll see through it. If they assume no one notices, they're wrong.  Each and every confirmed incident will be de-anonymized and researched by an actual human so if you would rather we not copy your mother and your boss on your hate mail, don't send hate mail."

 

* * *

 

###  **September 10, 2006 |  Any devices pointed to 8chan.org / stormfront.org / Gab.com**

 

Superwoman's face replaces the message board.

 

 

 

 

> **“Yo dawg, so I hear you like to joke about killing Jews."**
> 
> **“Tough.  One click and anyone who wants to can make you disappear.  Two clicks and I will follow you back to your homes, your work computers, whatever.  My computer is bigger than your computer.”**
> 
> **“So, we’ll have to settle this the old fashioned way. “**
> 
> **The camera pans out, showing her leaning against a tree with a rifle on her lap.  Papers, flags and a filing cabinet with the lock broken off are arranged at her feet.**
> 
> **“Aren’t these neat?  These are membership rolls from some sloppy SOB in Atomwaffen.  I bet the FBI would love to see these. Oooh and this...this is home addresses, social security numbers, and “workplaces for thousands of Stormfront members.  This...”**
> 
> **She shakes a series of blueprints.**
> 
> **"Are bombs someone was planning to mail to congressmen."**
> 
> **"Two days from now, I wrap these up in a bow, grab a fruit basket and walk these into the FBI headquarters.  Unless you stop me."**
> 
> **“ _Molon labe_ , bitch.  F** **air fight, if you're man enough.”**
> 
> **Pulling a butterfly knife from her pocket, she pricks her thumb, showing off the resulting blood.**
> 
> **“Because as long as I breathe, you will not succeed.  I will live a thousand years. I will be making life hell for your great-great-great-grandson, assuming you manage to find a woman stupid enough to reproduce.”**
> 
> **“Go to a march and I will post to all your Facebook friends, boss first, exactly what kind of bigoted, insecure basement-dwelling trash you are.”**
> 
> **“Raise a swastika over American soil and I will burn it, no matter what it’s painted on.”**
> 
> **“Found an ethno-state in the woods and I will tear your bunkers apart to last the brick.”**
> 
> **“Shoot up a business or a place of worship and I will rip the guns from the hands of every last man wearing an iron cross tat or a confederate flag shirt.  I will cut you out like the cancer you are.  If you inbred, backbirthed, waste-of-skin sisterfuckers hadn't noticed...I'm serious about this.”**
> 
> **“Bring hate and murder to the streets of America, my home and I swear to the Jewish God, the Christian God, to Allah, to Freya and Zeus and Kali and all the gods there are...I will make you beg for something so _sweet_ and _gentle_ as you got in World War II.  I will make the Siege of Berlin look like a motherfucking pillow fight.”**
> 
> **“Last, but most important...if any blonde, blue-eyed Nordic girls are thinking of upgrading...call me.  I know lots of nice people. I can help you settle down, on the right side of history.”**
> 
> _**"Dos vedanya."** _
> 
> **She hefts the rifle, aims at the camera and fires.**
> 
>  

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Dos vedanya"_ is a Russian saying meaning basically "until we meet again"
> 
>  _"Molon labe"_ is Greek and, according to the legend of the 300 Spartans, is what Leonidas said when ordered to lay down his weapons. It translates to "come and take." It is not uncommon to find it being used by extremist gun-rights groups or worse, so here it is used to show that she knows their lingo.


	35. OVER THE WIRE: Breaking News From CatCo Worldwide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "OVER THE WIRE" is a series of sound bites from news broadcasts or political speeches, or giving a glimpse of other events around the world over a period of time. Will be told either as the broadcast, an audience's reaction, or as the narrative of the event itself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **GLOSSARY:**  
>  "CTIS" -- Standard designation under galactic unity rules for a merchant cargo vessel (Cargo Transport, Interstellar Ship).  
> "S.1181" -- Senate 1181 in shorthand notation. Senate 1181 in 2006 was actually a tweak to _how to debate_ future changes to the Freedom of Information act--classic US Senate, those party animals--so I made it something a bit more fun!
> 
>  
> 
>  **AUTHOR's NOTE #1:**  
>  The CTIS _Promise_ is presumably a heavy or ultra-heavy freighter to be worthwhile as a jury-rigged military vessel. Most likely either Helgrammite (sturdy systems, extremely thick hull) or Rakni-Xinda (fast sublight, power-efficient FTL cores, self-healing, quasi-organic systems), as those two species produce the vast majority of heavy freighters.

**September 11, 2006 | Byara 'Nokva' (Nameless), First Rank Vanguard, Kryptonian Republican Navy, Central Theatre**

  
Galactic Unity Communications Station #14812

Chusha (aka Starhaven) system, 20 million kilometers from the edge of the Rao-Starhaven-Davarr shipping lane 

 

Byara puts her boot on the Daxamite's face and pushes.  His body slides off her sunblade with a pungent stink of burnt flesh and a disgusting sizzle.

"Corridor is clear?" Kendra whispers over the comm.

"Affirmative."

Astra hits the wall next to Kendra, tapping at her wrist computer and extending the sensor filament on her sensor drone.  Inside the control room are four more, all of them High Guard. The bodies of the actual crew are in cryo caskets stacked along the wall.  

_Filthy talaqs.  Those bodies should have been given to the sun ages ago.  Couldn't risk the cargo drop, I suppose. It's a lot of resources to spend keeping this station silent..._

"Good work, soldier."

"Aethyr," Astra commands.  "Main terminal. Spike it. Thirty marks before security locks you out.  Can you do it?"

"I can."

Astra nods.

"This is for Krypton," Byara growls.

"Buzz mines," Astra decides.  "On three. Two mines to a hostile.  Once they're engaged with the mine, kill them."

 

The terminals reboot.  Aethyr whoops.

"Station is answering our commands now.   Reporting the attack on the relay to the Unity now."

"Play back the station's logs for any communication that were screened, dropped or not relayed."

 

> **"This is Melsha Novka, Entertainer's Guild, attached to House Ina-Zenn.  Requesting citizen designation number and disembark point for Mael'Thoran. Thirty-fifth transmission attempt.  Control tower or colonial adminstrator, please respond."**

 

Kendra's eyebrows raise.

"They were silencing transmissions to Earth, she suggests."

"They wanted Councilor Zor-El to think her offer of citizenship was rejected.  Isloate her," Astra growls.  She draws her sidearm and puts two more shots into the nearest Daxamite's still-cooling corpse.  Byara chuckles.

"What else?"

 

> **"This is the CTIS** **_Promise,_ ** **under command of Tonn Shala-Vikket, expatriate member of House Shala.  We are acting as militia for the Republic.  We are being pursued by a Daxamite heavy cruiser.  Course bearing i-"**

 

Static overwhelms his reply.

"Rip the whole transmission.  Rip anything in Kryptonian languages or from a Kryptonian built transmitter.  Everyone back to the ship in ninety marks," Astra commands.

"Any idea where they are?"

Atheyr sighs.

"They were near the Wall of Storms.  Good nebula to hide in," she observes.  

"Send them a reply.  Ident, acknowledge and tell them we're coming."

"We're going to take on a ship of the line in that museum piece?" Kendra worries.

Astra laughs.

"That area is full of plasma storms.  High gamma levels. We're going to rig our ship to pilot it from the radiation shelter, loop around at top speed, drop out right on top of their bridge and cook them where they stand.  With a cruiser beneath our feet, we can do some damage to their supply lines."

Kendra smiles.

"Been a while since I led a boarding party," Byara chuckles.

"Hope you remember how," Astra jokes, clapping her on the shoulder.

Byara removes the filter crystal from her lancer and swaps in the refracting crystal and dual-singularity reactor chamber from her pack.

"I remember," she chuckles.

Kendra raises her eyebrow.

"Keep the safety on, soldier.  This station has seen enough. No need to core the hull with a misfire."

 

* * *

**September 11, 2006 |  Television viewers of the five-year memorial of 9-11**

 

 

> **"-ause headaches, diarrhea, dry mouth, liver failure, cardiac arrest…"**
> 
> **The ad changes.**
> 
> **A woman stands in the desert, watching over a heard of sheep.  Atop an appaloosa mare, she keeps pace with the herd. Her boots are scuffed and the lasso at her hip slaps the horse's haunches.  A man with a gray goatee rides up besides her, leans over and pecks her on the cheek.**
> 
> **She jerks the reins and the horse canters to a stop.  Behind her the Grand Canyon can be seen.  The camera swoops in close.**
> 
> **"My name is Annie Black.  My family's ranched Arizona for four hundred years and we'll ranch it for four hundred more if I get a say.  I was born in a claw-foot tub in my nana's house in Pheonix. I'm an American."**
> 
> **Her face shimmers, becoming a golden, gleaming liquid.  When it settles, her face is decorated with ridges of thick scales.**
> 
> **"I'm an American...and I'm an alien.  My family is Durlan...though this rascal," she jokes as her husband's lasso swoops into the frame and smacks her horse.**
> 
> **"Is red-meat, home-grown human.  M** y **family fled religious persecution on our homeworld.  Earth saved our lives but it was America that let us worship as we liked."**
> 
> **"I'm an American, I'm an alien, and I deserve peace of mind.  Call your senator.  Tell them to vote yes on the ALIEN act."**

 

* * *

 

**September 12, 2006 | US Senate Chamber**

 

"The ayes have it.  The motion to pass Senate 1181 is sustained."

 

* * *

 

**September 12, 2006 | Times Square**

 

> **The reporter stands in front of a cheering crowd.  A crowd of a thousand colors and skin types and whose members have flippers and antennae and whose limbs range from four to nineteen.**
> 
> **"Well folks, it's official.  As of 3:14 this morning, President Obama has signed what is commonly known as the ALIEN act.  Any alien residing in the United States is eligible to apply for a green card and any alien who can document being born on American soil will be considered for native-born citizenship, per the 14th Amendment."**
> 
> **A purple-scaled woman in a hot pink T-Shirt bounces into the frame and dips the reporter for a long kiss that leaves the reporter red cheeked, wide-eyed and covered in glow-in-the-dark lipstick.  Her hair is ruined when she gets back on her feet.**
> 
> **"For NYC-11 and CatCo worldwide," she gasps, blush darkening her olive skin.  "...this is Connie Nyugen."**


	36. Battle of Third Manassas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":  
> Where Sam and Ruby make a successful Stealth check, Kara sets a trap, Mercy Graves does lunch, neo-Nazis push the wrong button and there is a limit to a Super's mercy, the woods are lovely, dark and deep, there are consequences (and puns) for one's actions, and Lena gets some hate mail.
> 
> OUR NEXT EXCITING EPISODE:  
> Where Lena is too hard on herself, Kara needs to lie down for a minute, and President Obama and his plucky speechwriter have a real situation to untangle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE #1:**  
>  The Battle of Manassas, Virginia is also commonly called the "Battle of Bull's Run" and was one of the earliest battles in the American Civil War. Carriage-loads of people from Washington DC traveled to watch, expecting something romantic or heroic with their afternoon picnic and to see the victory of federal troops.
> 
> Instead, they were among the first civilians to witness horrifying new weapons and see the abject butchery that the war had become -- the first "total war" -- and fled back to their homes as the federal army was routed.
> 
> There were two battles on the same spot, years apart, sometimes called "First Manassas" and "Second Manassas". The second battle was much larger but lacks the revelatory importance of the first one. It was years later, people knew how awful the war was. 
> 
> **AUTHOR'S NOTE #2:**  
>  Alex is in a bad spot here. Except in extremely limited cases, military personnel cannot operate in a police or police-like capacity within the United States ("Posse Comitatus Act") except internally on their own bases.  
> DEO-1 could wipe the floor with these goons but in this case, that's murder, not engaging a hostile force.
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE #3:**  
>  Kara cannot fully trust the legal system to deal with these guys for two reasons. First, she's black and smart so she doesn't trust it to stop racist assholes. Second, the evidence she offered in the video might not be admissible because of chain-of-custody issues.

###  **  
****September 12, 2006 | Kara Danvers**

Rural Virginia

 

The whoosh of the air conditioner and the creak of the leather of the seats only worsens the silence between them.  Lena sits in the passenger seat, her usually gleaming white skin reddened from crying.

"Lee," Kara sighs.  "I have to."

"I know," Lena sniffs.  "And I hate it."

"If I have my powers, they won't come.  We need them to come out. I'd rather not sweep the country for Nazis door-to-door.  Besides, even without my powers, I'm hardly a sitting duck."

Lena nods.

"I know."

Kara turns off the ignition.

"Well, might as well get this over with."

She toggles the communicator she left laying on the dash.  The commander of the unity fleet's flagship answers.  

"High Councilor Zor-El, a pleasure."

"High Councilor?" Lena whispers.

"Arch-Commander, meet Lena Luthor."

Thin, unpainted blue lips tighten.  Lena shudders.

"For what my brother did, I'm so-"

Then the Arch Commander laughs.

"What the fuck?" Kara mumbles.

She frantically presses mute.

"That woman…" Kara sputters

"I didn't mean to!" Lena squawks.

"This better be a misunderstanding," Kara growls, her irises red and gleaming.

"She's entitled to her opinion, darling."

"Not about you, Lena.  No one is entitled to that…  She's done this for fourteen thousand years!" Kara grumbles.  "A little professionalism too much to ask?"

After closing and opening her fists several times, Kara turns the audio back on.  The Arch-Commander lifts her gaze from whatever status report she was reading.

"Lady Luthor, always a pleasure.  I should..." she sighs. "You deserve an apology.  I was trying to do too many things at once, I'm afraid.  What I was laughing at was something else in front of me.  The betrothed of a Kryptonian councilor is always welcome, whether on my ship or on my communicator."

"Even if you can't talk Kara out of this stunt."

Lena rolls her eyes.

"If I couldn't and her mother couldn't, it can't be done."

Kara taps out a tune on the steering wheel.

"I've decided, Arch-Commander.  If something happens today, Lena Luthor is head of House of El, inducted by betrothment and elevated by survivorship."

"Meaning…" Lena prods.

"Meaning you're the only voting member of our chief legislative and executive body, least until some others show up," Kara sighs.  "Meaning that I'm placing my culture's future, our heritage, our role in the galaxy, in your hands."

She gives Lena a peck on the cheek and hops out of the car.

"You're just leaving me here?" Lena grumbles.

"You're an Irishwoman whose lover is off to war…" Kara jokes.  "You've got it handled."

Leaning back inside the car, Kara grabs Lena and kisses her until their lips are sore.  She taps the tip of Lena's nose.

"Back soon, _filteach beag_." <"Little raven" | Galeige >

 _"Imeacht go fánach ort féin is ar do chnapán miúlach,"_ Lena groans.  <"Off with you and your lousy lump." | Galeige | Traditional curse > 

 _"Cén chnapshuim? D'fhág mé an crios sa bhaile,"_ Kara calls over her shoulder.  <"What lump? I left the strap-on at home." | Galiege>

Kara gets just a glimpse of Lena's deliciously blushed cheeks before she shuts the driver's side door.

[Kolex, update me on our little changes.]

[I disagree with this in the most strenuous terms, Lady Kara.]

[Where's your sense of adventure?]

[Where it is NOT is allowing you to disable your reflexive biological defenses before entering combat with known lunatics who would kill you for the color of your skin…]

[Sounds crazy when you say it like that.] Kara replies.

[Because it is!]

[Is the canister I requisitioned ready?]

[The one you wouldn't tell me the purpose of?  Yes. It is transmatting now. Lady Kara...please be careful.]

[Always, old friend.]

A container the size of her fist appears on the pavement in front of Kara.

"Hello, Plan B."

 

 

This is the fourth man in an hour to walk by her wearing body paint, a torn-off shirt and carrying a department-store machine gun.  Two fell into her pit traps and one tripped a stun wire halfway up the slope.

"Really?" Kara hisses. "More torn-off shirtsleeves?"

She settles deeper into her cover and lifts the rifle.  She spent two days, non-stop, finishing the design and running simulations.  Now she gets to fire it.

"Feels like a shame to use this on you…"

She pulls the trigger.  The rails clamp the shell, the coils spin up.  Iron atoms that make up the shell are consumed utterly and immense energy released goes into the coils.  

Faster.  Faster. Faster.

The would-be Rambo goes flying, clearing the treetops and sailing somewhere east.  He was thrown into the air by a shell that landed fifty feet in front of him. The nearest four pines were vaporized, a fifty-foot crater replaced them and a rockslide buried another half dozen.

"Whoa," Kara murmurs.

She glances at the status report inside the display.

 _0.98c on a 15 nanogram shell...shit.  Too slow._ "Huh.  That wasn't even lightspeed."

She thumbs the power control panel, turning it up, and loads another shell.

"Well, I shouldn't have to wait too long."

 

* * *

 

###  **September 12,  2006 | Lena Luthor**

Alexandria, Virginia 

23 miles from Kara's location 

50 yards outside the security perimeter of Langley, Headquarters of the CIA 

 

The server doesn't even reach the table before Lena waves her off.  Across the street, square and gray and dull in a thousand well-calibrated ways, is the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency.  

"Just water, thanks."

"Yes, ma'am."

Lena tucks a fifty under the napkin.  Easier than figuring out the bill in a casual restaurant, she's always felt.  She flicks open the sunglasses she and Kara made each other for "Raid-a-versary" presents to celebrate Lillian's defeat.  

"Greetings, Lady Luthor," chime the glasses.

"Jesus!"

_I should've known Kara would do that.  At least I had the decency to get her ordinary glasses._

"Mute."

Her phone rings.

"You know, Mouse, I'm amazed you lived this long, jumping out of your seat and drawing attention like that…" purrs a woman's voice.

"Mercy."

A green dot of light dances through the water of her glass.

"Forty feet back, on your five o'clock, kid.  Just like always."

Lena considers turning to look at her old friend then remembers Mercy would probably demand to kick her ass in the sparring room for breaking cover like that.

"You find him?"

"Mmm-hmm," Mercy coos.

"Jack, say hi."

"Hi."

"Listen, la-"

"Jack!" Mercy snaps.  "I have a goddamned Uzi pressed to your back.  Custom job. Special frame, special gunpowder, special metal, special bullets, all made by the smartest and meanest bastard I have ever met."

"You're crazy.  This is a publi-"

"I have a permit to carry this.  Legally. In Wash-fuck-ington-DC, I have a license to carry this gun.  If I am smart enough to get that, don't you think I'm smart enough to not get caught, Jack?  Hmm?"

"Yeah," he admits.

"The good news is that if you tell us what I want, I'll jab you with this needle and around this time tomorrow, you'll come to with no fucking idea what happened and a five-star high.  Be like if the dentist gave you heroin for a root canal."

"That's if you're a good boy.  Do you want to know what happens if you're a bad boy?" Mercy asks.

Lena hears the faint click of a mechanism, probably the fold-out stock Mercy uses to fire that Frankensteined hand cannon she and Lex built without turning her arm to gritty paste.

"No...  I'll be good," Jack mumbles.

"Tell us everything you know about your work for the ARB and Project Golem."

 

  
Mercy settles into the seat across from Lena.  

"Coke," she tells the server.  "The kind that kills."

The girl smiles and nods.

Mercy's dark sunglasses _almost_ hide the earplugs trailing from them which will protect her hearing when the shooting starts.  Her blouse is loose and buttoned to the top, meaning no one would ever suspect the body armor.

At Lena's insistence--and with much grumbling--Mercy accepted Kara's tweaks to her gear.  It's unclear if her whining was just force of habit because Kara's an alien, force of habit from twenty years working with Lex on her gear, or some mixture of both.  The whining dropped off quick when Kara showed Mercy how her new vest can take a bitch-slap from a Kryptonian.

"How are you, Mercy?" Lena asks.

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. You're my friend."

"I killed my kid brother, Lena."

"I'm sorry, I shoul-"

"Stop!" Mercy snaps.

"I killed him because he was a risk to your life.  It was the right call.  I did it, just like that," she says with a snap of her fingers.  "...and then I told a joke to the cops. I don't think I even felt anything until weeks later, when the doctors really pressed me on it in therapy."

"It's OK to love him, Mercy.  Even if he did bad things. Lex nearly killed Kara and I still love him."

Mercy chuckles.

"I…" she stalls.  "I'm feeling more things now.  Probably a sign I needed therapy before this _,_ to be quite honest.   It's a lot to navigate."

Lena offers her water as a toast.

"To navigating being human."

"Sounds good to me," Mercy chortles.

"Why are you wearing those sunglasses, Mouse?  It's cloudy and you're under a damned awning."

"Shh!"

Lena watches the patrol of security staff in the lobby.

"Three man patrol, five-second offset. Body armor, probably class two.  Sidearms only. Glass has microscopic cracks from a patch job on the third-to-last pane.  Only thing bulletproof about it is the word bulletproof in the contractor's logo."

She takes the glasses off.

"Temporary access to Miss Graves.  Try them."

Mercy slides them on.

"I want one," she mumbles.  "It's not exactly stylish," she mutters, tapping the chunky stainless steel rims.  "But...wow. I'd wear this in the shower."

"I'll ask Kara."

"She'd do that?" Mercy wonders.

"Far as I can tell, she sees you as part of the family.  My vodka aunt."

Mercy chuckles.

"What do you say we drink our lunch, Mouse?  For old times sake?"

Lena pats her clutch, making sure Kara's anti-alcohol poisoning hypo is in there.

"It's a date."

 

* * *

 

###  **September 12, 2006 | Kara Danvers**

Rural Virginia 

 

"Get out here!" the man barks.  "Get out here or I blow her Jew brains out through her Jew nose."

He's shoving a twenty-something woman in a Duke University sweatshirt with the end of his AR-15.  She's whispering to herself and tears have soaked the top half of her shirt.

 _Talaq-fucking coward…_ Kara thinks.

Kara slings the rifle over her shoulder and shifts the holster for the pistol so it hangs behind her back.

[Blue Beetle, are there any other friends in the area?]

[No.  She is the only hostage.]

[ I need an uplink to the _Memory_.  Fire control deck.]

[I don't suppose there's any point reminding you that after hobbling yourself like this, just the edge of an arc cannon bolt would kill you?]

[Not much point in it, no.]

Kara drops the canister into her left hand and grabs one of the barrier blankets in her right.

"I'm coming out!" she calls.

[Blue Beetle, send a micro-drone out.  Relay this audio right in her ear.]

"My name is Kara Zor-El.  This time tomorrow, I'll be in Temple Beth Shin with my mother...and so will you. I'd like you to be my guest.  Because you will live through this, woman. Blink three times if you understand."

Blink.  Blink. Blink.

"Here's what's going to happen.  I'm going to throw a bulletproof blanket at you.  Right before it hits you, it'll unfurl and wrap around you and that asshole.  But it will cinch down. You'll be wrapped up head to toe. His head will be unprotected."

"When that happens," Kara whispers.  "Close your eyes."

Blink.  Blink. Blink.

Kara squeezes the control on the canister.  A supernova blooms in her fist, searing away that which is just Kryptonian and hammering at the neutron-matter inner skin, enraging the monster inside her.  

 _"Shala, who stacked bones like mountains…"_ Kara whispers.

She throws the blanket canister towards the girl, swings the pistol up and starts shooting.  It's not as powerful as the rifle but it'll do and the revolver-based design amuses Kara.  One man, then another, then two more vanish in clouds of plasma as incredibly hard, incredibly tiny metal darts hit them at just past the speed of light.

_This is the only justice they deserve._

From somewhere behind her, machine-gun fire rakes her back.  Kara can feel the blood pouring down, soaking through the fabric of her pants.  She staggers towards the hostage-taker. He is jerking back and forth, trying to get his gun hand free as sheet metal hard enough to stop an asteroid gradually clamps down around his bones.

[Blue Beetle?]

[I hate you, Kara Zor-El.  I wish you had told me you had that failsafe.]

Kara levels the breach of the rifle at the Nazi's head.  She turns the power all the way up.

"I am a member of the master race!" he shouts.  "Our victory is inevi-"

She fires.  

"I'm Superwoman."

All that's left of his skull is a jagged bowl of shiny pink crystals a few feet down in the dirt.  Shock quartz from the impact with bedrock.  The ground shudders as the remnants of the shell pierce the crust and come to rest somewhere in the molten guts of the earth.

Explosions turn the whole world around her orange and something throws Kara against a jagged rock face.

"Get her!" someone shouts.

[Starting to think you're right about this being a bad idea.  I need weapons-free on the _Memory_. Every gun except the centrals.  Keep the point defense arc cannons locked on me and fire them in two-second pulses.  I need the charge.]

"Burn these fuckers."

Kara's vision is fading but she keeps it together long enough to watch the first hail of plasma blasts strike the treeline.

 

* * *

 

###  **September 12, 2006 | Alex Danvers**

Rural Virginia 

  
"I am so mad at you right now, sis."

"Hiiiii," Kara groans, lifting a bloody hand for a thumbs up.  When she does, pain lances up her arm.  

She looks down.

_Kryptonite handcuffs.  FBI stamped on them. Guess Alex didn't share with the DEO that I'm a Worldkiller.  Soon as my skin closes, I won't feel a damned thing._

"You know, there's a _system_ for this kind of shit?" Alex demands.  "Like, there's laws and cops and so forth."

Kara draws in a deep breath, scraping the injured skin of her chest against the remnants of her clothes in the process.

"I know.  I...they wanted to hurt you.  And mom," Kara sniffles. “I didn’t want to kill anybody.  I...was in a hurry at the end.”

Alex sighs.  

“If you had to break a rule, Kara, break it with domestic terrorists.”

Someone to Alex's left laughs.

"Hi.  I'm Agent Simmons.  Kara Danvers a.k.a Kara Zor-El, you are under arrest for manslaughter."

Kara waits for her rights to be read.  Nadia would smack her if she didn't do this by the book.

"That tracks," Kara admits.  “So, that was self-defense, right?”

Alex laughs.

“Let me count how many pieces of shrapnel are in you.  Then we’ll talk.”

Kara tries to laugh but it hurts too much.

“Make sure Lena is with me.  She was not thrilled about this plan and I can’t lose her.  And could I maybe ride on the roof of the prisoner truck? Or does it have windows?  Need some sunlight.”

 

* * *

 

###  **September 12, 2006 | Donna Troy**

Manassas City Jail 

 

"Hey baby," the guard coos.  "Have you been bad?"

The flame in Donna rises quick.  Her pulse soars. Blood sizzles in her veins and pounds in her ears like the war drums before the Games back home.  The hateful curse Circe inflicted on Donna while she was still in the womb tightens its coils on her mind.  

Without her sister's teachings -- without the benefit of Diana's century-plus experience of man's world -- his guts would already be in the wastebasket by his desk.

Instead, she flashes a smile.  She shucks her suit jacket, rolls her sleeves up and plants her hands on his desk.  Some of the cords of muscle in her triceps are thicker than his nightstick.

"Donna Troy, attorney for Kara Danvers.  Most successful trial lawyer in New York City.  And trained and tested Amazonian warrior. I once slew a minotaur with arms thicker than your ribs and balls the size of your skull.  Three blows. I didn't need the third. I just wanted to hear him scream when I took them off…" Donna teases.

"So mind your tongue, half-man."

The boy swallows hard, turns the sign-in sheet around and lowers his eyes.

"Frank'll take you to her," the boy squeaks.  "Nice fella."

"Thank you.  And young man?"  Donna sniffs the air.  "If you mind your manners, you'll not disappoint your mother.  And need fewer changes of clothes."

"Yeah," he mumbles.  "That's probably better."

Donna slides her coat back on, straightens her shoulders and knocks gently on the bars on this side.  A gray-haired black man with a faintly-lined face and warm, butterscotch colored eyes opens it.  

"Here to see a prisoner?" he asks.

"Mmm.  Kara Zor-El."

"Don't have a Zor-El here."

"Can I see the list?" she pleads, using the tone of voice she uses to lure starlets out of Hollywood dance clubs.

"Uh, yeah."

"Her," Donna declares.  "And tell your boss that it is a violation of National Security Letter number 13,078 to print _that_ name on any documentation.  That's a felony. You just put her family and her hometown in danger. Hope you didn't have any plans for federal funding…"

Frank nods.

"My boss...can be a real ass sometimes, ma'am."

"I'll tell him then.  Thank you."

Men's hands reach out from between the bars and swipe at the air.  Like snakes trying to poison their prey.

"Would'ya look at those tits?" one hoots.

"Big girl," one of the men mutters.  Donna flicks her eyes his direction and is pleased to see him raising the book he was reading back over his face.  He was making an observation and nothing more.

"Same size when she's on her back," his cellmate jokes.

The boy is a greasy-faced lad of seventeen at most.

"Might I borrow this?" Donna asks, pointing at the nightstick.

"Long as you don't hurt him," Frank sighs.  "Dwayne needs to learn some manners."

Donna slams the nightstick against the bars of his cell and it rings like a gong or a cathedral's bell, making everyone wince. He jumps back.  She threads the shaft between two of the bars and pulls back. With two flicks of her hand, she leaves the steel, rubber and carbon fiber stick bent into a knot like a bowtie.

The boy's face is ash-gray now.  The half-erection he had been sporting has vanished.

Frank whistles.

"Doubt they'll call you any names after that, ma'am."

"I'll reimburse the department," Donna assures him.

"Or we could just sell that on eBay," Frank jokes.  "Police Nightstick, bent by Donna Troy. Bidding starts at 30k."

Donna chuckles.

"Let me know where it ends up, if you do."

 

* * *

 

###  **September 12, 2006 |** **Kara Danvers**

Manassas City Jail 

 

The chief of police has his gun to Kara's back and is leading her towards the largest cell.  One with twenty or thirty men in it, maybe more. Men she recognizes. Men she looked down her rifle's sights at this morning.  Men with swastikas and nordic runes and iron crosses tattooed on their necks and chests and faces.

"Classy," Kara mutters.  "Throw the black girl in with the skinheads.  You running for re-election or something?" she jokes.

"Not a fucking word you alien bitch," he snarls.  "You're a murderer.  Be glad you're still breathing."

[Kolex?  How's our recording?]

[Crystal clear.  I could play this audio at Carnegie Hall and it would fill the room.  A doctor could diagnose his melanoma based on the video images.]

[Good.]

He opens the cell and kicks her to the floor.  Rather, he kicks her and rather than staying on her feet and letting his femur shatter, she plays along. A little over an hour ago, she  managed to wiggle her shirt sleeves between her skin and the Kryptonite of the cuffs.  Not much of a radiation shield but enough.  The Destroyer grafts and her heightened resistance did the rest.  The 'poison' lining her handcuffs might as well be magic marker fumes, for all the damage it will do.  Her skin is closed and all of Ferocity's nasty little ideas dance in Kara's head.  The worldkiller had never been taken prisoner during the war.  She doesn't know a jail cell from a biology lab.  Kara is having to shoot down idea after idea of what they could do to these men and how Ferocity could learn more about how to break human bodies.

Around her, thirty men crack their knuckles.  They pull out sharpened pencils, toothbrushes and in one case, what looks like dentures he rubbed on the concrete bench to sharpen it.

Kara whistles.

"Anybody wants to have a seat before you get started, might help your case," she reminds them.  "And save you some doctor's bills."

She never heard so many men call her a 'dyke' or a 'jew' or a 'nigger' in unison.  It was like they were a choir but had practiced slurs, not songs.

The first man is built like a refrigerator and he swings his fist hard.  It connects with her mostly-healed cheek and she sees the ripple and jiggle in the skin and fat.  She counts twenty-three separate sounds as finger bones snap.

_Why not?_

She turns her other cheek to face him.

"After all, you're a good Christian, right?" she jokes.

The rest of them pounce.  Kara waits them out. Never lifts her hands.  Never reacts. Before long, a ring of collapsed, whimpering men surrounds her like dead leaves dropped from a tree.

Kara crouches down next to one of them.

"You didn't really think I'd give up my powers for good?" she purrs.  "I just turned them off long enough to take out the trash."

"What the devil were you thinking!" a woman shouts.

Most lawyers don't sound like that.  Donna would sound no different ordering a phalanx to advance on the enemy as she did just now.

"Glad you came, Donna!" Kara calls out.

"Not now, Kara."

"You," she snarls.  

"Watch your tone!  I'm the chief of police, missy."

"You're a homeless man, you mean.  Let's see. Birch Tree lane, nice little three-story bungalow.  Won't pay the whole judgment but it'll do for a start."

Kara turns to watch.  Donna leans over him, tilting her head down to remind him of the four inches she has on him.  Seven in those heels. None of his deputies are falling over themselves to back him up, either.

"Because you just tried to have a prisoner beaten to death by other prisoners, in full view of one, two, three…five closed circuit cameras and the prisoner's lawyer.  Get my client into a room where we can speak privately, go back to your office and sit your ass down, Chief Thompson."

 

Kara smacks her lips.  It's terrible but it's coffee.  

"Thanks for coming, Donna."

Donna smiles.

"The Justice League makes it worth my while.  Do you know how much I make _answering the phone_ when it's about you?"

Kara shakes her head.

"You don't want to."

Donna puts her head in her hands.

"This is bad, Kara.  This could go anywhere from the death penalty to a misdemeanor, depending on if you're convicted and of what.  How much did you tell them?"

"Not much.  I was delirious when Alex took me in.  I said something about 'self-defense', I remember that."

"Will that even work?" Donna wonders aloud. "I think I'd have trouble selling it for someone who can't be killed…"

"Hand me that pen, please."

Donna slides it across.

"There will be blood," Kara warns her.

"Oh, my delicate feminine brain," Donna snarks.

Kara jams the pen into her left hand.

"It broke the skin...how?"

"The plan," Kara sighs, "was basically to lure them all into one place, get them to do something stupid and then let the FBI nail them.  I have copies of lots of their documents, membership lists, etc. I could give those to the _Momento Mori_ and the American neo-fascist movement would die out.  Overnight. But I didn't want that. They've hurt too many people to just disappear."

Donna drums her long, manicured fingers on the table.  Her nails are black with a handful of hand-painted stars and Greek symbols brushed in with what must have been a single horse-hair brush.  On her right hand, the index, middle and ring fingers have Lambda, Episilon, Zeta on them, one per nail.

"Nice nail polish," Kara jokes.  "Short trim though."

Donna blushes.

"Someone get to enjoy that Lambda symbol?  Maybe somewhere...warm?  If you put all three in her, it'd spell L-E-Z."

Donna snorts.

"Goddesses, you're a problem, Kara.  In my defense, it was _her idea._ "

Kara leans back in her chair.

"I'm told they don't have conjugal visits so...teasing you."

"Ugh.  You won't be in here that long."

"Where's here, actually?"

"Manassas, Virginia."

Kara works her jaw back and forth.

"About four months ago, there was some flooding. Near here, I think.  It made it to a fracking facility and a chemical plant. The floodwaters downstream from that were toxic enough to peel paint."

Kara screws her eyes up, tapping her fingers on the table as she counts something in her head.

"I airlifted about five hundred people.  Got dozens of cars. Sandbagged the tributary they get drinking water from Relocated and reassembled mobile homes.  Spent so many hours that week that CatCo had me doing "a feature" to cover it up."

Donna's eyebrow arches.

"That," she laughs, sipping her own coffee.  "Is goddamned diabolical, woman. You do realize that the whole can't-find-a-fair-jury thing is usually because the person is too _hated_ in that jurisdiction?"

Kara shrugs.

"I like being nice to people.  Can you do it?  Can you keep the trial here?"

Donna nods.

Kara slides a flash drive across.

"This is everything I gave to the FBI, plus some stuff my cameras captured.  I'm working with an agent named Arquette."

"I'll get it to her.  Meanwhile, try not to break any more Nazis," Donna teases.

"I refuse to take responsibility for men who punch things tougher than them…"

* * *

 

###  **September 13, 2006  | Maggie Sawyer**

Midvale, Maryland 

Sloan's Snow Shoppe 

 

A few beats of the _James Bond_ theme blast out of Maggie's phone.  She lifts it from the dashboard momentarily, reads the text and smiles.

**Shipmate:  Mommy One nagged.  Update on Mommy Two and Three?**

**ThinBlueLezz:  Mommy Two in jail.  Mommy Three needs a hug.**

**Shipmate:  Wow. Good thing my mom gives great hugs.**

"You're gonna make a girl suspicious," Alex teases.  "Hiding your texts like that."

"It's from a fricking kid, Alex.  Parents aren't great so I ask her to check in with me."

"Oh.  Well, now I feel like an ass."

"Nope.  I mean, yes, you have a  _top-shelf_ ass but tha-"

Alex smacks her with the fold-out map.

"Wondered why you brought those," Maggie mutters.

"Plan B.  Plan A was a spritz bottle.  Like for cats."

"Insert pussy joke here," Maggie snickers.

Alex thumps her head against the steering wheel.

"Ugh!  Mags! This is an ice cream shop, there will be children.  Can you behave yourself for like, ten minutes?”

"For you, babe, yeah."

"All right then."

Alex unlocks the doors and hurries over to Maggie's side of the car.  Maggie is already leaning against the frame.

"Damn," Alex sputters.

"What?  Were you hoping to open the door for a damsel in distress?" Maggie teases.

"We really should stop having these 'my soft butch is bigger' contests," she adds.

"Who you calling soft?" Alex jokes, flexing as she takes Maggie hand.

 _Muscles...those are literally military-grade muscles,_ Maggie thinks, a memory of Alex throwing her around the bedroom scorching all other thoughts from her brain.

"You OK, Mags?"

Alex's other hand is pressed to her forehead.

"You zoned out there."

"How bad is it, doc?" Maggie asks.

"Hmm.  Close your eyes."

No sooner has she than she feels Alex's lips brush her closed eyelids.

_Taking a risk.  We're in public.  Friends don't kiss each like that, Alex!_

"I'm afraid it's serious.  You're terminally cute."

"Alex?  Oh my god!"

Someone hugs Alex with enough force that it dislodges Maggie.

"Mike Delucca, Maggie.  Maggie, Mike."

Maggie opens her eyes.  A bear-like Italian man is crushing Alex into him with a hug.

"Little mean girl, look at you!" Mike gushes.  "I'm so proud. We all are."

"This one," he says, waving a finger at Alex.  "This one is the best waitress on the entire East coast."

"Assistant manager," Alex grumbles.  "And I wasn't that good."

Mike scoffs.

"Only assistant manager because you would murder the customers, otherwise."

"I'm sorry, what?" Maggie laughs.

"This wasn't always an ice cream shop," Mike sighs.  "Started as an Italian bistro. Which was fine until we got lots of big-shots from DC on the weekends.  Sometimes, they were politicians and sometimes…"

He nods at Alex.

"They thought my little helpers were on the menu."

Maggie nods.

"Ahh…yeah, I don't see that working on her."

Alex smiles.

"Mike has a very...paternal approach to restaurant management.  I was, let's see."

"Fifteen.  It would be a Class-B felony," Mike growls.

"Easy, big guy," Alex jokes.  "So there's this congressman from...forget where."

"Tennessee.  District eight.  Miles Raybould," Mike grumbles.

Alex shivers.

"Please tell me you don't have a murderboard in your basement where you're planning revenge," she groans.

"I pour the wine, I see him glancing down my shirt.  I think 'no big deal' and next time I'm in back, I adjust things and then grab a white napkin and a black one, sort of make a striped scarf.  Now there's nothing to peek through, right?"

"Actually, that was very fashionable," Mike teases.  "We added it to the uniform the next week because of Alex's little brainstorm."

She rolls her eyes.

"I go back to the table.  He yanks it off me, shouts something about getting his money's worth, and goes to grab me."

"What'd you do?" Maggie asks.

Mike breaks out into a messy, snorting, doubled-over fit of laughter.  Alex blushes.

"I grab the napkin and when he puts his hand on my ass I loop the napkin over it, pull it past me and tie him to a chair next table over.  He couldn't reach to untie himself."

"Oh my god," Maggie giggles.

"That's not the best part!" Mike wheezes.

"So," Alex drawls, rocking back and forth on her feet.  "Turns out Mrs. Raybould was meeting him there. She comes in, sees her hubby tied to a table, the waitress just shouting bloody murder at him."

"What happened?" Maggie demands.

"That's what she said," Alex jokes.  "Literally. She didn't even untie him while I explained.  When I'm done, she looks around and the whole room is nodding that yeah, that's what happened.  She sets her purse down, asks me to hold her hat, takes off one shoe and then kicks her husband in the balls.  Plows him. Like she was going for a field goal at the Superbowl. He passed out."

"Then she let me untie him.  Mike comes over, offers her a free entree and bottle of wine.  When the congressmen came to, Mike tells him he's never welcome here again and that the whole thing was on CCTV footage will be available to any journalist who asks."

Mike grins.

"That security footage was the only attack ad his opponent needed for the election."

"Now," Mike declares, reaching -- but not touching -- Maggie's shoulders.  "Let me see."

She nods and he takes hold of her.  Gently, for a man his size.

"My, my, my, Alex.  She is lovely. Gentle heart.  Kind eyes."

"He knows?" Maggie hisses.

Alex shrugs.

"Not on purpose.  Small town. Word got out, maybe?  Or just Mike... And I asked for the place to ourselves for an hour or so.  Staff are sworn to secrecy. Should be fine. I'm told there's a surprise waiting."

"The staff walk past the picture of your takedown every day when they punch out," Mike tells Maggie.  "They will not talk. Your Alex and your secret is safe with them, _cara mia._ "

"I'm not Italian," Maggie complains.  "Just in case you were wondering."

"No?  Hmm. Spanish, then?"

"Mexican-American, actually."

Mike smiles.

"It's why your skin glows.   The desert sun never leaves you."

"Down boy," Alex grumbles.

Moments after they sit, Mike comes by with a dangerous-looking sundae along with a laminated card describing it.  When Alex reaches for her wallet, he smacks her hand with a spoon.

"The Sharpshooter Sundae?" Maggie chortles. 

She looks at the card.

"The buyer throws six candy bar pieces at the red circle and if three or more hit it's half off?"

Mike nods.

"Alex invented it."

"I did not.  I was out of the country."

"When she enlisted, we wanted to give her a good sendoff.  So this is it."

Maggie scrapes one side with her spoon, pops it in her mouth and swirls her tongue across the cold metal, cleaning it to a gleam.  Alex makes a small whimpering noise.

"Vanilla with strawberry and blueberry pie filling.  Red, white, blue," Mike says with a grin.

"Army green would've been hard to manage," Alex jokes.

"No, no, we have a Green Beret Mint too," Mike assures her.

All the blood leaves Alex's face.

"Far as you know," Mike jokes.  "Some flavors for Kara, too."

Alex takes her first spoonful.  She shudders and closes her eyes.

"In retrospect, the bistro was a _terrible idea_ ," she swoons.

 

"Ready for stop number two?" Alex asks.

"God, no.  What's this going to be?  The town mechanic who gives me the shovel talk?"

Alex chuckles.

"Don't think we have a town mechanic, _per se_."

She starts the rental back up and heads north, towards the edge of town.  Maggie fiddles with the radio until she finds a station playing 80s riot-girl tunes.

"Old building got torn down," Alex mumbles.  "The district is putting up a new one."

She lifts her finger from the steering wheel, pointing to the sign at the edge of a barely-grown in lawn.

"Danvers Academy," Maggie breathes.  "After your dad?"

"No," Alex murmurs.  "Not mostly.  After _me_.  Because of the Army service," I guess.

"You _guess?_ " Maggie hisses.  "Your hometown isn't as small as mine because this isn't fucking Nebraska, either.  Alex...of course they're proud of you.  Midvale will always be on the page about American military history."

Alex swallows.  Maggie reaches out and grabs her hand off the gearshift.

"I know this is hard for you, babe.  You like it simple. Praise scares you."

"Kara chipped in some money," Alex sighs.  "On the quiet. Enough to pay teachers through the next ice age."

Maggie whistles.

"Damn, babe."

"I'm scared, Mags."

"Then why are we here?"

"It's Career Day.  They want me to open the jay-rotzee."

"The what now?"

"Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps," Alex replies.  "That one uses my name and my Pentagon level title. The Superintendent Alexandra Danvers Military Leadership and Mentoring Program."

"So like college ROTC, but even younger?  Seems fishy."

"It's non-binding, Mags.  You can't sign up that young but some kids already had an interest.  I did. And those poor kids are expecting Dwight Eisenhower to walk in there...not, y'know, me."

"Danvers, I love you.  You know that but you _cannot_ sell yourself short on this.  They don't create whole new armies for lightweights, okay?  Maybe people in your hometown are over the top about it but you're a big deal.  Did you read that New York Time piece?"

Alex shivers.  

_Shit..._

"So public speaking and fawning admirers, which bother you.  And because it's military, you can't take your girlfriend with you to it." Maggie realizes.

"Yeah."

"Idea!"

Maggie unbuckles, leans over into the backseat and grabs her handbag.

"Gotcha!"

Alex's brown eyes swing towards the badge on Maggie's belt.

"One disguise in the form of a supervising detective's badge.  Learned something on a case a while back. Every high school in the country lets a cop in on Career Day.  If anyone asks, I'll say I'm taking a break from my booth, 'kay babe?"

"Thanks," Alex gulps.

"So...need a pick me up?"

Maggie rubs the back of her hand against Alex's cheek and she roots into it, turning her face towards Maggie's hand.

"Turn on the AC, babe.  Tilt your seat. And put on some music."

Closing her eyes, Maggie lets her hand navigate Alex's body by feel and memory alone.  She trails one fingernail down the column of her throat, flicks it against the pocket of her shirt and pops the buttons, one by one.  Then something gets in her way.

_Unacceptable._

She circles Alex's ear with her tongue.

"Take off your belt, Alex...uhh!"

Alex's hand found her already warm, already slick, already needy and took full advantage.  Maggie shudders and rolls her hips, trying to get more.

"I'm a secret agent, remember?"

"Right there, baby," Maggie groans.  

"I love you, Mags."

"I love you, Alex."

 

### September 13, 2006  | Lena Luthor 

Washington DC

Watergate Hotel

 

Lena falls to her knees next to the wastebasket and empties her guts into it.  The smashed television on the wall still loops the DA's campaign speeches. The DA who is going to be "hard as old hickory" on crime.  The one who put six young black men away for 10-30 for smoking weed in their own homes. The one who happily works with that cop who tried to have Kara killed.

"Easy, Mouse…" Mercy coos, rubbing her back.

"That man," Lena croaks.  "He _has_ Kara."

"I know, Mouse.  He also has a pack of bloodthirsty lawyers on his ass, one of whom is a 1400 year old badass…and Veronica Sinclair who scares the fuck out of me.  He can't do anything to Kara when she's powered up."

"You don't know that."

"Actually, I do.  Lex and I used to spitball how to go after Superman.  The key thing was _time._ We could put this trap or that machine together but if it took six months, someone would come looking.  If we get busted, we had one shot to use it. Window of an opportunity of a hundredth of a second. Time matters in a gunfight, Lena.  Only thing that matters more is if your weapon jams."

"It would take him months to get the hardware to even bruise her--assuming it exists--and he'd get caught the next day, as many people are watching him."

"She's _good,_ Mercy.  She'll never break the law like that.  If they want to put her down, she'd let them…"

Mercy _slaps_ Lena.  Hard.

"Lena, you listen close.  Your woman is kind and she's good but you know why?  Because she's got _you._ She's got a cunning, brutal, ruthless lover who will do _anything for her._ Kara can be made of light because you have the darkness in you.  Relationships are give and take. Two people with a lot of things the same but a few things different.  All the best ones, at least."

"How would you know?"

Mercy's smoke-black eyes fall away.

"I didn't make Otis apply for Lex's cleaner crew for no reason, Lena.  I had a score to settle. Someone took something from me. Hell, Joe even got along with Otis, which…"

Mercy sniffs.

"Everyone has someone.  Or they used to."

"I'm sorry, Mercy.  I didn't know."

"How would you?" 

Neither of them speaks for a long time.

"There were cameras in the jail, right Mercy?"

"Hmm."

"What kind?"

"LordTech 8221's.  Rock solid. Cloud backup.  Two hundred seventy degree lenses.  Need a fifty cal or a sabot shotgun round to pop one."

Lena chuckles.

"I actually only needed the manufacturer.  Grab my phone, please."

An indignant screech in the next room is followed by a flash of light and a pissed off dragonet settling her claws into Lena's blouse and her head on her shoulder.  Abigail's narrow, rough tongue tests Lena's cheek.

"Boost her up, you spooky little lizard," Mercy tells Abby.  "I'll be right back."

  


Mercy's driving is no less bracing than before.  Lena has to remind herself there's a reason for every slightly-too-close lane change and pass.  Every strangely slow approach to a quiet intersection. All of it calibrated to make it hard to get close and easy for Mercy to put distance between her and anyone who does.

She sets her phone on the center console and aims the projector at the glasses Kara gave her.  Maxwell Lord's penthouse appears around her, blocking out the Land Rover. He seems to be having breakfast.  Or so she hopes. A violet dressing gown and hair still wet from the shower. A salt rock lamp can be seen in the background, the music is mellow instrumental and if the packet's label is to be believed, the oatmeal organic and free trade.

Lena had heard that Wonder Woman's foiling of his one-day attempt at world domination had changed him.  Apparently it was a full break.

"Max."

"Lena, long time no see.  You never call. You never write.  You're breaking my heart."

"First, I'm gay.  Second...since when did you have a sense of humor, Max?"

"I'm a changed man," he laughs.  

A slightly-too-tall woman takes the next seat over.  She has a slender build, she moves with the grace of a prancing horse, her red hair is absolutely flawless skin and her posture that puts Lena's own to shame.  She snags a strawberry from his oatmeal and pops it into her mouth.

_Is that?  Can't be._

"Did you settle down?" Lena exclaims, loud enough that Mercy chuckles.

Max grins.

"Who is this fetching creature, Max?"

"Cassandra Turing, Lena Luthor."

"Any relation to Alan?" Lena asks, half-jokingly.

"Only in spirit," Cassie replies.  "All right pumpkin, I'm going to let you nerd weirdos catch up.  You seen my fiber box?  Want to catch up on _Call the Midwife_ while I work out."

_Pumpkin?  He has fallen hard.  Never would've let a one night stand get a pet name in._

Max winces.

"Upstairs closet.  And not in front of strangers, please, honey."

"Pfft.  Like Lena would be bothered."

Cassie steals a fingerful of oatmeal and vanishes off-frame.

"Wonders never cease, Max.  I'm happy for you."

He blushes.  Max Lord. A man with an ego larger than the planet, a string of one-night stands with everyone from Maxim models to Harvard post-docs and a swagger he _trademarked_ for introducing new cell phones...blushes.

"I'm guessing you figured it out, Lena?"

She nods.

"Android, right.  Earth tech?"

"Yeah.  Apparently the term is gynoid.  Self-powered, self-maintaining, self-aware.  Originally part of our green tech initiative.  Idea was to make a body that didn't need food, didn't need a car, so on.  Let the super green, super pierced Portland crowd upgrade.  Brain-computer interface never really gelled," he sighs.

"Cass is the third.  First one works in the accounting pool.  Second is a Buddhist monk, last I heard. Buddhist nun, I suppose."

"Did she get a choice in the matter?" Lena asks.

_I have one, two, three...nine people in this little black book who can kill him if he made a sex-slave android._

Max laughs.

"You wound me, Lena.  I'll have you know she's dumped me three times.  So to what do I owe this pleasure? Not that an audit of women's rights is ever unwelcome but ideally, let's do those after six o'clock in the morning"

"LordTech 8211 cameras.  I need to know if say, a crooked cop can delete footage."

Max laughs into his coffee, splashing it over the _Wall Street Journal_ he was reading.

"Well, that was humiliating," he grumbles.  "And absolutely not. If someone 'disables' the camera, the light goes off but the cloud recording continues.  A separate copy is siloed on a triple-key encrypted server we run internally. If they unplug it, a lithium-ion with a four-week lifespan kicks in."

Max sighs.

"When I was five, a G-Man had the fucking nerve to try and tell me my parents died in a car accident.  I was on the phone with them when the seals on their suits failed. They knew what that meant. They told me they loved me and called my aunt.  That was it. I spent three days reading up on what Ebola does to the human body. Every single product I make, I sit down and think if it can be abused by the government."

"So if my lawyers were to subpoena that, complete footage?"

"I guarantee it."

"Thanks, Max.  Check your email.  I have an off-the-books question about your work with my mother.  Something I doubt the FBI asked you."

"Great," he groans.  "Now I need another shower.  I will take a look."

She taps the glasses' rim and the call ends.

"Anyone else you want to reach out to, Lena?" Mercy asks.  "I know that book bothers you."

Lena flips a few pages.  Lex actually has a section entirely for hired killers.  Though he did use the Latin term for it. She finds the name she wants and dials the first number in a chain of burner phones.

The man who answers has a voice like broken concrete.  This one is audio-only. Probably a prepaid flip phone.

"Slade."

"This is Lena Luthor.  I want to re-open the family account.  Two jobs. First. I need you to tail someone.  Don't move on them just yet."

"Softie," he grumbles.  "Kid gloves cost extra."

"Second, I need a subcontractor.  Someone who can dig up a CIA black project.  That one is a sandbox. I only need one beating heart, if you can even find him."

"That's even more expensive."

"Do you know someone?"

"Yes.  Three teams, actually."

"Race them.  First one to get me what I want gets extra.  Cash prize. Low nine figures. Check your Cayman's account," Lena tells him.  "Anything else...put it on my bill."

Mercy's knuckles are white on the steering wheel.

"Did you just call _Deathstroke_ , Mouse?"

"I have my reasons.  What's the first rule of political assassinations?"

"Once it's done, kill the killer," Mercy mumbles.  "You're going to take him off the board once he gets you the goods."

"Have to save my soul somehow," Lena replies.  "Be a dear. Wake we when we're in Midvale."

Lena takes off the glasses, tilts her seat back and closes her eyes.

She sleeps like a kitten the whole way back.

 

* * *

 

### September 13, 2006  | Sam Arias

Midvale, Maryland 

 

  
The front door to Kara's childhood home is painted a cheerful cherry red, calling the eyes away from the tulip pink stucco around it.

"Why is this so scary?" Sam mutters.

"Because you want to bang Lena like a punk rock drummer and her girlfriend lives here," Ruby mutters.  "You don't know whether to knock or not."

_Christ.  She's not even in the third grade yet._

"Ruby!  Who is teaching you this stuff?"

"Internet," Ruby replies.

"Give me that," Sam grumbles.  "No internet for a month."

Ruby types something in and hands the iPad over without even a whine.

_Mystery for another day, Sam tells herself._

Sam manages to knock.  A skinny woman with half blonde, half gray hair answers.

"Doctor Danvers?"

"Call me Eliza, please.  Sam, right? Lena's friend?"

"Yeah.  I wanted to surprise her.  Figured she could use a nice surprise."

"Come on in.  I'm making a ridiculous amount of pancakes.  Are you…"

"We know," Ruby butts in.  "Mom got drunk with Lena and Superwoman and some like, assassin and FBI ladies.  Alien alcohol stinks, bee tee dubs."

"Need a hand with your suitcase?" Eliza asks.

"Nah.  I travel light, unlike princess here."

She plops her day bag next to Lena's luggage.  No mistaking it. A mix of Gucci leather, garment bags and carbon fiber briefcases for who-knows-what.  Because of course Lena can't take a vacation and not tinker on something.

"I can help with the pancakes," Sam offers.

"You're a guest."

"And you're a cancer patient.  I win."

Eliza frowns.

"Figures you'd be pushier than Lena.  All right, jacket off. Sleeves rolled up," Eliza commands.  "You're on banana slicing duty."

A strange man's voice rings in Sam's ears.  

That damned voice out of nowhere.  The one which has to be her losing her mind but coincides with no other symptoms and has earned shrugs from five expensive shrinks and counting.

_"Erok-El, who marched to Shadow and Death…"_

_"Thara Lar-Zenn, who they cut for two years but never broke…"_

When the trance breaks, Sam thrashes in surprise, slamming the knife into her middle finger.  Staggering back in a panic, she knocks over the chair with her coat. Something clatters against the floor.

"You all right?" Eliza asks.  "Let me see that."

Eliza grabs Sam's hand before she can hide it.

"Nothing," Sam assures her.  "Missed. Lucked out."

Eliza smiles but only halfway.

"Honey, look at the knife."

The knife has a near-perfect outline of her finger dented into it.  Sam bends down and picks up what looks like ring off the floor. Under a shattered plate of moss-green glass lies a mass of humming, vibrating circuitry.

_Is that blood?_

She wipes the edges on her sleeve before Eliza can see.

_Maybe Lena would like to pick it apart._

"I'm scared, Eliza.  I've been hearing voices.  Chants or rhymes or something.  It repeats a lot. It's in a language I know that I don't speak but i understand them anyway.  When I hear them, weird shit like that happens."

"Can you repeat some of what you heard?"

Sam stumbles through the last phrase in the chant.

"That's standard Kryptonian," Eliza murmurs. 

"What?"  Sam hollers.  "That makes no sense."

"Did you…" Eliza pauses.  "Did you not know?"

"Know what?"

"Honey...your bare hand just ruined a laser-sharpened knife and you're having flashbacks in Kryptonian.  Seems pretty clear-cut. Let me guess. You have years of unused sick leave?"

Sam nods.

"Means you're not sick.  You're like my little girl.  Miracle from the heavens. Maybe you were injured in the escape?  Memory loss?"

Sam stumbles back.

"I can't be...it's...I can't be!" she shouts.

Eliza flinches.

"Sorry," Sam groans.  "It's just...I'm a _mom_.  It's all that I am.  It's the best thing about me.  If I passed on something awful to Ruby, I couldn't live with myself."

Hands with gentle, work-worn fingers grasp Sam's hand and squeee.

"You're so warm.  Like Kara. When she was a baby Ruby loved cuddling you," Eliza teases.

"I never got her to sleep in a crib," Sam admits.

"Sam, look at me.  I actually have two human-Kryptonian nieces.  Beautiful little girls. Healthy as their father.  No ill effects whatsoever. If you'd like, I could peek at Ruby.  Unless you'd like Alex to do it?"

Sam shakes her head.

"What about a second opinion?"

"That would be Alex, or me, depending on who you pick.  Three people on the planet qualified to even do fist aid on a Kryptonian and they're all named Danvers.  Me, my daughter and my late husband. Though his bedside manner was terrible."

 

* * *

### September 16, 2006  | Lena Luthor

Midvale, Maryland 

 

Relief floods through Lena's body.  It's like her blood was just replaced with chocolate. A week of crying herself to sleep in an empty bed that felt like the arctic without Kara curled around her.  A week of nightmares about Kara being walked into a Kryptonite injection chamber alternating with nightmares about Kara's face when she finds out how many died in Lena's private war to free her.

All of it finally over.

"So between our leverage and the possibility of Lex as an expert witness, Alex, yourself Superman and Lois Lane as character witnesses, the DA decided to save himself the trouble."

"Plea deal for assault with deadly, extenuating circumstances of defending someone who could not defend herself and citizen's arrests.  All hushed up as per Kara's new Justice League privileges.  Side note:  I expect a seat at her induction."

"You'll have it," Lena assures her.

"What else?"

"The DA needed to save face on the charges he could prove he got three hundred hours of community service and a fine on the trespassing even though the farmer said it was fine.  A restraining order against vigilante activity for two years."

"Thanks, Donna."

"You know," the Amazon-turned-lawyer replies.  "I don't like dirty pool, as a rule of thumb.  But you make it an art form, Lena.  Soon as I get your lady into a taxi, I'm going to  _gut_ this man.  Any particular requests for disposition of his property?"

"Southern Poverty Law Center?" Lena wonders aloud.  "I think they have a racial disparity project."

"Sounds good.  Go in the goddess's peace, Lena Luthor.  May Athena steel your mind, may Hera warm your breast, may Aphrodite touch your soul, and may Artemis ignite your revelry."

"Thank you."

 

* * *

 

 

### September 16, 2006  | Lillian Luthor

Midvale, Maryland 

 

"Where am I?"

"Welcome back, Mrs. Luthor."

"Eve?  Eve fucking Tessmacher?" Lillian groans.  "Lex's moronic little groupie?  Just kill me again."

"No can do.  You're going to help me break out Lex."

"Hell I am!" Lillian shouts.  "He betrayed me."

Eve flicks something on a remote and pain lights up every nerve in Lillian's body.

Then something bizarre happens.  Kryptonian chants ring over the PA.  Screams fill the hallways.

"What th-" Eve mutters.

A fist plunges through Eve's ribcage, spattering blood and scraps of bone on Lillian's face.  The fist is white-hot and the edges of the wound crackle, cauterized before the blood starts to flow.

"No," Eve moans.  "Lex...I have to save Lex."

_Insipid little bitch._

Eve's body is ripped in two, leaving little more than a spray of blood and strings of meat.  Lillian is facing a stocky woman with light bronze skin and short black hair in a truly pitiful bowl cut.

"Lillian Luthor, I name you an enemy of the House of El.  Kneel or die."

"Who the fuck are you?"

"I am Purity.  Fist in service to the Empire and to the Empress undying, Ktharra Zor-El, regent of the Houses of El, Ina and Zenn.  You have ten ticks to kneel."

_Fuck.  I guess Eve got those caskets open._

 

* * *

 

### September 21, 2006  | Lena Luthor

Midvale, Maryland 

 

 

Lena gets the edge of the stylus under the outer layers of circuitry.  Twisting slowly, she pops it off, revealing a completely different layer beneath.  

_ It's like the circuits were burned into the substance in a three-dimensional shape.  It's like I'm looking at neurons, not circuits. _

"This is amazing," she tells Kara.

"Hmm?"

"This ring.  Sam gave it to me to tear down."

"Can I peek?"

"Sure."

Kara leans over Lena's shoulder but not before planting a sloppy kiss on her left cheek.

"Get away from that!"  Kara shouts. "It's...fuck.  It's a Green Lantern Ring."

Lena jumps up but the ring follows.  It sails into the air, sliding itself on her right thumb.  A layer of translucent energy surrounds Lena. Kara reaches for her and ends up smashing into the opposite wall.

"Lena Luthor of Earth.  You have great intellect.  Your vision is keen. Your ambition is limitless.  You will be the first member of the Crystal Lantern Corps."

 

"Well, fuck," Lena mutters.

"Well fuck is right," Kara grumbles.

"Get it off me, Kara!"

"I can't, babe.  Those are powered by...well, by basically a miniature universe.  It's staying on your hand unless it feels like leaving.  Sorry."

Ruby comes up the stairs.

"Lena!  Package guy for you," she hollers.

Poking her head around the door, Ruby whoops.

"Mom!  Lena's got superpowers now too!"

The idea of being seen by a total stranger while wearing what looks like a layer of quartz blister pack does not appeal. Lena feels like some kind of Businesswoman Action Figure still in the original packaging.

"Okay," Kara sighs.  "Let's stay calm.  Those rings choose people for a reason.  It said it was because you were smart. I've never heard of the Crystals but if they're like the Blues or the Purples, they're good guys."

"I'm going to go talk to some folks, get some ideas, okay babe?"

Lena nods and Kara is gone, leaving a trail of blue lighting.

She heads downstairs, her heart pounding and breathing shallow.  The delivery man is a wiry fellow with a silver beard and a smile.  The package seems to be a series of freezer containers.

"Sign please."

"Thank you.  Have a nice day, ma'am."

_Fingerprint reader, that's weird._

Lena presses her thumb to the nearest box.

Inside is the head of Alana Connor, who temped for Jess for three days when Jess went to her sister's wedding.  A single hole in her forehead suggests her cause of death.  Lena's shriek draws Sam to her but Sam's new at using her powers so she actually bowls Lena over in the process.

"Oh god," Sam chokes, turning away before she gets sick.

"They're my assistants," Lena chokes.

"Jess?" Sam asks.

One by one, Lena opens boxes.

"No, thank god.  Her security detail is solid.  These poor girls were the soft targets."

Lena's legs buckle.

"I'll call the police but let's get you inside."

In the end, Sam has to carry Lena upstairs.

"Let it out, Lena," Sam reminds her.  "Want me to call Kara?"

"No, she'd just feel guilty.  Hold me."

"Anytime," Sam sighs, laying down against the wall and spooning Lena.

 

 


	37. OVER THE WIRE: Breaking News From CatCo Worldwide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "OVER THE WIRE" is a series of sound bites from news broadcasts or political speeches, or giving a glimpse of other newsworthy events around the world over a period of time.

###  **September 17, 2006 |  Senator Olivia Marston**

United States Senate, Armed Services Committee 

 

The woman in the witness' seat is Olivia's sort of woman: her eyes sharpened by years of hard lessons and wearing what few wrinkles she has like jewelry.

"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing else, so help you God?"

"I do."

"State your name and identify yourself for the record, please."

"Shay Mitchell.  General Shay Mitchell, United States Army, attached to Joint Strategic Operations Command."

"General Mitchell," Olivia begins, taking her reading glasses off and jabbing them towards the witness stand.

"You were asked to speak because we are following up on an anonymous tip investigating violations of Department of Defense protocol."

General Mitchell sips her water.

"Yes.  Specifically, violations of DOD Directive 1304.26, more commonly known as Don't Ask Don't Tell.  If I may, Madam Senator?"

Olivia nods.

Mitchell goes over to the easel where she has, apparently, put up old-school placards.

"Old soldiers," Mitchell jokes.  "Stuck in our ways."

She whips the curtain off.  On it are blank black squares, eight rows and eight columns, above a list of combat operations and a kaleidoscope of medals, pins, ribbons and other honors.

"These sixty four men and women comprise the DEO-1 to DEO-8 fireteams.  These are the medals they have been awarded. This is their monument," Mitchell explains, jabbing her finger towards the ceiling.

"In the four years I have had the honor of leading them, these men and women have without any exaggeration, prevented the extinction of the human race on at least three occasions.  It took me two years to get the first three teams together. They are one soldier in fifty thousand...willing to fight a monster one moment and willing to bandage its wounds the next moment.  Willing to walk into hostage situations with terrorists of species humanity has never before encoun-"

"Your point?" Martson demands.

"Under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, any service member who is gay, lesbian or bisexual is to be separated from the service.  Immediately.  Without regard to their effectiveness, their loyalty, their importance to the unit, or anything about their quality as a soldier. So…"

She uncaps a red sharpie and starts ticking boxes.  Eventually, twenty boxes are crossed out, including all of one team and someone on each team.

"I ignored it.  I was tasked with protecting my country and the human race.  Doing that and honoring DADT were exclusive. That's what the DEO looks like if I had followed protocol."

Mitchell reaches into her pocket and pulls out a polaroid.  She hands it to the Senator from Texas and nods that he should pass it down.

"I'm sentimental about it," she admits.

Mitchell removes her cap and sets it on the table.

"Senators, I am a lesbian."

The handful of audience members present seem to stop breathing.

"I married the woman in that photo--the love of my life--at a cabin in Vermont.  We'd been together nearly thirty years by then… But her fourteen-year-old cousin demanded that she go to every wedding in the family and the kid knew we were a couple.  So we had one.  She is in federal law enforcement. I'm military. Between us we have put three-quarters of a century of our lives into the protection of this nation and enforcing her laws."

"And because of your laws--because someone wanted to go home and say 'I kept the gays out' at a stump speech--what I just did invalidated both our pensions and ended my military career."

Mitchell takes her seat.  

"Furthermore, as a commanding officer who has been disregarding DOD instructions, I have violated chain of command -- repeatedly -- and need to be placed under arrest.  I'm more than happy to wait."

She presses her wrists together and holds them out in front of her.

 

* * *

 

###  **September 17, 2006 |  General Shay Mitchell (retired)**

Washington DC area 

 

 

Cameron's grin is _feral_ when Shay cracks the hotel room door.  Wrists sore from the cuffs, back aching from a day spent in crappy plastic chairs and skin sizzling with leftover stress, she is unprepared for the collision.  Unprepared for her wife to ravage her in a way that has happened perhaps a dozen times a decade. Unprepared to have her hands placed on Cam's hips and to have her collarbone bitten and her shirt torn open.

"Why do you do this?" Cameron demands as she stumbles out of her own trousers.  "These stunts…" she groans, drawing in a lungful of scent. "It's risky...unh!  I love the way you smell."

"These little games," she complains, scraping her teeth over Shay's ribs.

Shay slides her fingers into Cameron and curls up, finding  _just_ the bundle of nerve cells she needs.   One thing about a life lived in stolen moments is that she can get Cameron off fast and do so practically anywhere.

"Never before in human history has the G-Spot been needed just for self-defense," Shay huffs, pulling Cameron closer.  "And I do them because they work. I'm here rather than in jail, aren't I?"

"Not another word, soldier…"

 

* * *

 

**September 17, 2006 |  Echo Itashka ("Unit", a shared surname for Kryptonian AIs)**

Midvale, Maryland

  
Echo's linguistic processes and social media analysis compares the news broadcasts for tonight from the transmission from Defense Secretary Gates.  Probabilities are assigned. Counter-arguments are made by hypothetical opponents. Recommendations made.

She contacts Flannel, who agrees.

They will let Alex and Maggie sleep.  

At no other time are they so at peace, their biorhythms so flawless.  

 

* * *

 

** September 17, 2006 |  Senator Olivia Marston  **

"Foggy Bottoms" Neighborhood, Washington DC    
  
  
"Di?" Olivia calls out.

Every light in the apartment has been turned off for some reason.

_I swear, if she brought one of those costumed lunatics down on us…_

A loop of buttery soft calfskin is placed in her hand.  She wiggles it and hears the chain links jingle. Hot breath caresses her left wrist, followed by a woman's lips.

"Mistress...please."

_No, Di.  Not for you, not tonight.  This is really hitting you, I can tell._

"It had to be done," Martson complains.  

_She drops the leash._

"No games, love.  No roles.  I'm not your mistress...not when you need your lover more."

Teeth grab the zipper of her suit trousers.

"It even  _sounded_  moronic!" she complains, flailing her arms at some phantasmal debate opponent.  Diana laughs which blows hot air across very tender skin.

"...the whole policy."

Zipper undone, a tongue snakes in.

"The wh-wh-whole thing was pandering.  All we had to do was hold it up to the light."

Olivia jumps when Diana's tongue curls around her panties, peeling them off so she can get them between her teeth.

"Good girl," she growls.

With all her obstacles removed, Diana returns, closing her mouth over Olivia's slit.

At long last she finds the matchbook she keeps by the door.  Striking one, she looks down in the flash of light it affords.  The gaze Di fixes her with is intense.  She's still in her armor and there's still dirt on the boots and the scabbard of the sword.  The news must have reached Diana when she was busy. Tears have dried on her cheeks.

_She must have been really moved._

"The tiara, darling?" she laughs.  "Really?"

She reaches down to take it off, then thinks better of it.

"I suppose your aunt would approve," she chuckles.  "Protecting the rights of women at war, after all."

  
  
  



	38. Et tu, Sam?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":  
> The one where Lena cheats, a new way to ruin sex is invented, dragons are good emotional support animals, turns out Kara abuses her supersenses when in bed, Sam is shook, Lena is self-loathing like usual, Maggie is the wise master for the gays and Ruby is the girl behind the curtain.

###  **September 17, 2006 | Kara Danvers**

Midvale, Maryland 

 

The house is quiet.  As Kara approached, she put her fingers to each window, closed her eyes and listened, letting the hum of vibration against her skin and the din in her ears blend into a symphony of whatever lay beyond the glass.

Eliza is sleeping soundly.  Streaky is sleep-snarling at something.

Alex and Maggie are _so incredibly gay._ Maggie's breathing and Alex's heartbeat are so close together they're almost the same sound, meaning Maggie must be using Alex's body as a pillow.

Kara turns slowly, hovering by her own bedroom.

"Sam," Lena gulps.  "There."

"I like the way you taste," Sam gasps.

Kara's eyes snap open.  Lena is spread wide on Kara's bed, Sam's head between her legs.  With her fingertips tented on the muscles of Sam's back -- _Rao's mercy,_ those muscles! -- Lena's body shakes and her long white throat struggles to take in air.  

Sam's skin is the color of Nutella and no doubt equally tasty and habit forming.  Straight black hair falls down her back like a curtain, reaching past Sam's ass and brushing the floor, denying Kara a glimpse.  One of Lena's legs is draped over Sam's shoulders and the other held aloft by a long, sinewy arm.  

Everything stops.  Kara feels a few particles worth of radiation on her cheek as some nearby carbon isotope gives up the ghost, cracking in half.

 _What do I say?_ Kara wonders.

Only twice before has her mind been so clear, so certain.

The instant Krypton exploded.  She knew it wasn't a dream. She knew it was real and awful and forever.

The moment Lena looked up into her eyes in that hotel bar.

Moments of certainty.  Moments where Kara knew what she would do as surely as she knew her own name.  

With equal certainty, she knows she wants to be in there with them both.  That her life needs to happen in the places between Sam and Lena.

So she taps lightly on the window.

Sam turns, her eyes two beacons of crimson light.

 _Fuck!_   Kara thinks.  _She's not an amnesiac, she's one of the Worldkillers._

Before Kara can get clear, Sam slams into her and carries them both into the air.  _"Vhoc's kiss!"_ Kara screams.  <Worldkiller keyword for 'rest'>

Sam doesn't even twitch.  She draws her left back and slams her fist into Kara's belly.  

[It appears that Sam's programming is damaged, Lady Kara.]

[You think?]

At this speed, Kara's street clothes don't last long.  They break out of the atmosphere before Kara can orient herself to push back.

[Central cannon on the _Memory_ , Kolex.  Disabling shot.  I'm going to try to find somewhere empty where we can talk it out.]

[Northwestern Tunisia.  Marking the point now. No human activity for four hundred kilometers and a low-biomass desert area.  Be careful, Lady Kara.]

_It'll have to do._

Sam's white-hot hand closes over Kara's face.  Kara strikes up, pushing against the elbow joint and breaking the hold.

[Fire when ready!]

The _Memory of Krypton_ turns to face them.  The bow of the ship splits like a camera's shutter and hundreds of targeting lasers train on a single point above Sam's chest.  The blackness of space disappears as the pulse travels from the emitters to the empty space between Sam and Kara.

[Now or never, Lady Kara.]

Kara lunges, grabbing Sam around the midsection, carrying them both just outside the kill zone.

Behind them, a day's worth of solar output is poured out in an instant, into a few stray atoms.  The black hole that blooms forth is brutal. Kara takes the worst of it. Her skin is vaporized by Hawking radiation and her muscles ripped off by the event horizon.  Even the neutron matter layer underneath her skin peels and flakes. The singularity dies almost as soon as it is born.

Space and time are turned inside out for a split second.  

Kara and Sam are flung to Earth.

 

 

 _Such a thing as too much sunlight,_ Kara realizes.

Kara can tell she is laying on her back and that it's daytime.  Not much else.

"You are foolish, Ferocity."

"Uh, hi?" Kara groans.  "I'm Kara."

She turns her head to face the speaker and sees what _should be_ Sam, except that Sam would look livelier than that if she were under anesthesia.  The creature using Sam's body is not one for expressing her emotions, apparently. She is kneeling on a small rock, scrubbing blood or oil or grime of some kind off her forearm with the sand.  All over her body, thin, nearly transparent skin is still growing back over the wounds.

"And you're Sam."

"No!"

_Well, that got her attention._

"I am Sovereign!  I am the Destroyer.  The galaxy will burn by my hand.  My bloodline will forge an empire.  Undying. Without flaw. Without limit.  Like we are."

Kara raises her hands.

"Okay, Sovereign, that's really neat and all.  But there's a little girl.  Her name is Ruby.  The woman I call Sam--that's her mom--and you're in Sam's body.  Or she's in yours. Point is that Ruby needs her mom. So you both have to share."

"Why should I care about this child?"

Kara pushes herself up to her knees.

_Note to self...do not fight other Worldkillers again.  Ever._

She manages her feet, stands up straight and walks over to the stranger, hand out, palm down.  Like the old paintings of Shala Ina-Zod or of the Second Empress of Krypton.  No doubt a Wordlkiller will know the courtier's gesture ordering a soldier to kneel before a noble.

"Because you are a Destroyer.  You conquer and kill and destroy and burn...you do this because you serve Krypton.  I _am_ Krypton.  My name is Ktharra Zor-El.  I am scion of Erok-El. I am the scion of Tara-Zenn and of Shola-Ina.  That child? That little girl?  She is one of _three_ children on this planet with Kryptonian blood in their veins.  Only three. That makes her more than precious. To her mother and to you."

"This is not Krypton," the stranger complains.  "Why?"

_Are you a two year old or the first Worldkiller?  Pick one, lady!_

"No.  It was destroyed.  You were sent here, by my father, to protect me.  Do you understand?"

"It is possible.  But unlikely. The image I was given was a girl, not a woman."

Kara shrugs.

"I got older.  Happens if you hang around a while."

"I see."

Kara feels the cramp rising up her left leg.

"Sovereign, you will allow Sam to control her body again.  You will only take control when Sam and I both permit it. Until we can merge you safely, you will sleep."

The crimson light flashes in Sovereign's eyes.

"That is an order, Destroyer."

Like a puppet with her strings cut, Sovereign collapses into the sand.  Kara falls on top of her.

"I hate you, Sam.  I hate you for fucking Lena but also for not fucking me and for hiding it and for making me say those things to you right now and for making me hurt you and..."

She sniffles, wiping her tears on her hand.

"Lena's probably scared for both of us," Kara humbles.

"What's the matter with you?" she jokes.  "You had Lena Luthor _right there._ You had your mouth on her!  You had her legs over your shoulders!  There is no reason you _ever_ give that up, you hear me?"

Kara chuckles.

"We are going to have a talk when you wake up."

 

* * *

 

###  **September 17, 2006 | Lena Luthor**

Midvale, Maryland 

 

The warm tongue that had been carrying her to the edge vanishes.  The hand on her leg is gone.  The lips that had been sucking at her hood, baring her clit. Gone.  

"Sam?" Lena croaks. 

"Kara?"

A sonic boom shakes every window in town.

Lena closes her eyes.  

"I just wanted to feel something _good,_ girl.  What have I done?"

Abby clambers down from the bookcase over the headboard and nestles in Lena's sweaty hair.  Her snow-white compound eyes slowly close and she nestles her snout on Lena's cheek.

Crying herself to sleep is harder than Lena remembered.

 

Someone knocks on the door.

"Little Luthor?"

Only Maggie Sawyer dares call her that.

"Come in," Lena calls.

Maggie cracks the door.

"Oof," she mumbles, stepping over one of a half dozen used-up tissue boxes.  The worlds saddest, most obvious break-up playlist ever is leaking out of Lena's phone.

"Is that...Jesus, woman!  Is that _Taylor Swift?_ "

"Kara…" Lena rasps.  "I lost Kara."

Maggie folds her arms.

"Uh-huh.  She tell you that?"

"What?"

"Did Kara say she dumped you?"

"Well, no…but she walked in on me and Sam.  Sam _attacked_ her, Maggie."

"Fuck-sakes, Lena.  So you've been through a week where your mother or some other sick fuck mailed you half of your office staff in pieces.  Your ex was here, sleeping in the same bed--it's a good coping mechanism--and sex happens. Kara was surprised, I'm sure...but you have _got_ to stop assuming bad things are all you deserve."

Maggie points at the foot of the bed.

"Move your tiny feet, fairy princess."

Maggie flops onto the comforter, hiding her face in her hands.  

"I have a confession," Maggie sighs.  "Remember that night when you and Kara had a dinner party at Sam's?"

Lena nods.

"Well, Ruby's a smart little shit."

Maggie chuckles.

"Next day, I walk into interrogation and Rubes and two of her besties are in there.  They're Green Martians. Meaning she knew that I did all the alien crimes, so she grabbed some alien friends and did some vandalism."  

"Why?"

"Because she wanted to talk to me.  She was watching the whole night.  Taking notes.  She thought her mom still loved you.  She also saw Sam and Kara being handsy.  She knew her mom was lonely and missed having her Aunt Lena.  So she came to me to make it happen," Maggie jokes, grinning wide.  "She needed a gayness consultant. So I've been helping her plant seeds, nudge Sam towards getting back together with you."

"You've been trying to break me and Kara up!" Lena snarls.

"No...I've been trying to _add_ Sam.  Do you really think there's a woman you could want to fuck who Kara wouldn't love?  A side girl you could have who would drive her off?   Your mother, I suppose…"

"Excuse me," Lena mutters.  "I have to go be sick now." 

"Have you ever asked Kara about marriage on Krypton?"

Lena shakes her head.

"Well, Alex caught me scheming and I got an earful.  Marriage was an arrangement. Pure and simple.  Computer matched.  Contractual.  As exciting as my taxes.  The higher up you were -- and Kara was at the top -- the more it was defined by the needs of the house.  But the flip side is that who you _loved_ was decided by the individuals. Just because Kara and Kal's mothers and fathers sound like human marriage?  Doesn't mean they were. Sharing the same beds, even having sex, that made them _old fashioned_ where they were from."

"Three-partner marriages were hardly unusual.  More often for business than pleasure. Rich people, like Kara's family, sometimes had multiple lovers.  If you show up to a government function, it's your spouse. Show up to a hot party? Bring the one you're fucking."

Lena just blinks at Maggie.

"Has Kara never talked to you about this?"

"She did," Lena murmurs.  "Or she alluded to it. Kara and Sam met when Sam snuck into my office after date night.  We were still cuddling. Lots of dirty jokes."

"Cuddling?" Maggie teases.

Lena makes an 'O' shape with her left hand and slides her right through it to the wrist bones.  Maggie whistles.

"Kara never pulled out.  I fell asleep like that," Lena murmurs, her cheeks pinking.  "Best sleep I'd had in months."

"All night?  Her hands are gigantic!  How did you walk the next day?"

"Carefully," Lena teases.  "And with fond memories."

Maggie shakes her head to clear the image.

"Back to my point.  So Sam sees that, cracks a joke.  I ask her to pull her hand out. She does so in the most over-the-top way possible.  What was it…" Lena mutters.

"Ah! Sam said either we had to leave or she got to have a pity fuck.  Kara joked that she was my oldest friend. I complained about Kryptonian marriage being for life.  She told me that the Kents taught her a couple is between two and four."

Maggie smiles.

"I'm from Nebraska, Lena.  I can confirm that factoid.  Kara was basically offering to add Sam, right then and there, if you wanted."

Maggie yawns.

"Get your ass downstairs for coffee or I'll have Gertrude drag you down in her talons.  Alex is flipping out about finding Kara and Sam. You should help her. Might as well retrieve your harem of alien goddesses, you lucky bitch."

Lena points at the door.

"Out!"

"Easy, there, don't go all supervill-"

Lena's pillow collides full-force with Maggie's face.

 

* * *

 

###  **September 17, 2006 | Sam Arias**

Northwestern Tunisia 

 

"Ow."

Sam cracks one eye open.  Kara is on top of her. Completely naked.  Buff as fuck.  Skin like warm silk.  Her lips curled into a cute smile.  Snoring so quietly that someone without superhearing might miss it.

Extremely distracting.  

"Kara?"

"Mmm…" Kara groans.  "Morning."

"Moon is out.  Pretty sure it's nighttime."

Kara doesn't lift her head.  She only turns her eyes up towards sam.  Meaning that Sam is staring at Kara's face and at the same time, every word Kara speaks moves her cheek, which tickles Sam's breasts.

"What was your favorite part of fucking Lena, Sam?" Kara asks.

"I'm sorry."

Kara puts one fingertip to Sam's lips.

"It was a comparing notes question, not an accusation.  Did you use your supersenses? There's this tiny crumple in her labia…" Kara murmurs.  "Gorgeous. It's shaped just like the rock formation outside Kryptonopolis. A volcano called the Moon's Knives."

"What?" Sam demands.  "You're not mad?  I slept with your girlfriend!"

"You also went berserk and threw me into orbit, Sam.  How much do you know about Krypton?"

"Damn close to nothing."

"Few thousand years ago, Krypton tried to conquer the universe.  They used super-soldiers called Worldkillers to do it. Stronger, faster, meaner, quicker-healing, harder-hitting than Superman.  Cloned body.  Genetic engineering. Lots of implants and some machines to beef them up. Bare-bones personality. When they disbanded the empire, the research was supposed to be destroyed.  Crooked scientists, my father included, preserved it. A few of the soldiers were put on ice.  When he sent me off, he had a robot put me through the surgeries to turn me into one and dispatched the remaining specimens to Earth. Including you and three others. "

"That can't be."

Kara reaches out and takes Sam's hand.

"Do you remember your childhood, Sam?"

"Bits and pieces."

"Where'd you grow up?"

"Texas."

"Where?"

"I...it was a small town, I remember that.  There was a car crash when I was fourteen. Before that is fuzzy."

"What was your first job, then?"

"Waitressing.  Roadside clubhouse."

Kara brings the hand to her lips and kisses Sam's palm..

"So a cash-only job you can get with a smile and a nice rack, which...you are _so_ qualified!  Gorgeous, that's exactly what might happen if a knockout alien fell to Earth in the desert, hit her head and tried to blend in.  Sam Arias _is_ a person, just an unusual one.  She's the memories and the friends and the skills and the feelings your subconscious sought out to fill in a gap. "

"Ruby," Sam sniffs.  "She's mine, right?"

Kara laughs.

"I sure hope so!  How much do you remember about giving birth to her?"

"I remember that it took about nineteen days," Sam grumbles.  "I remember Lena held my hand. I remember...I remember my thesis advisor trying to steer me to a different track after.  Asshole."

"I bet you remember every kick and what you ate every morning you puked your guts out while you were pregnant, Sam.  Because you're the sort of mom every kid _deserves_ and only a handful get."

Kara pushes herself up off Sam.

"I want what Lena was having," she jokes.  "But we should probably go back to Midvale."

"Kolex?"

A tattoo on the right side of Kara's collarbone lights up.

"Yes, Lady Kara?"

"Transmat us home.  The edge of the shield, beach side."

"Clothes?" Sam demands.

"Fab a set of PJs for me and one for Sam.  Pre-position them at the transmat target."


	39. OVER THE WIRE: Breaking News From CatCo Worldwide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "OVER THE WIRE" is a series of sound bites from news broadcasts or political speeches, or giving a glimpse of other newsworthy events around the world over a period of time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE #1:
> 
> I decided Ruby should be about ten years old, not six or seven. A year or so younger than show Ruby. Her age is tied pretty heavily into the Kara/Sam/Lena love triangle and I want her to be old enough to have had a crush or two when that ripens.
> 
> I will retcon her age in earlier chapters ASAP.
> 
> AUTHOR'S NOTE #2:  
> All the pieces are in play now so expect the pace to increase markedly. Sam and Lena and Kara need to figure some shit out and shit has to hit the fan politically after Kara's "rumble like it's 1945" with the neo-Nazis. Kara is going to have to slow her roll because of the injunction against vigilante activity within US borders. Branch out. Focus on refugee aid, ABLE, working international crimes with Winn ("Winnternational") and so on.
> 
> We'll be at election day, 2008 before you know it.

###  **September 20, 2006 | Lena Luthor**

National City, California 

L-Tech Solutions 

105th floor, Lena Luthor’s Apartment 

 

 

"She's ten, Lena."

Lena jabs her baguette in Sam's direction.

"Exactly.  Perfect age.  Articulate, smart as a whip -- I mean, look at her mom -- but still heart-wrenching to listen to."

Kara slides into the seat next to Lena.

"So…"

"No, Kara.  Hard no," Sam groans.

"Not ready to talk about us, huh?" Kara jokes.

"Lena?"

Lena's cheeks go from ivory to crimson.

"Not just yet. I'm enjoying a good night's sleep."

"Think there's a law of diminishing returns?" Kara asks out loud, splashing her baguette through the olive oil and taking a huge, crunchy bite.  "Like, Lena with zero women holding her, that's baseline. That's the untreated insomniac. Lena with one woman, that's an improvement.  Lena with two wo-"

"Enough!" Lena snaps.  "It's just," she sighs.  "It feels so fragile. I don't know what's next but I know that what we're doing now, I like it.  I don't want to lose."

"Three," Sam declares.  "Three is where it drops off.  Third woman? Where's she gonna go?  Just flop down on top of Lena?"

"I hate you both…"

"Well, your blanket grabbing technique suggests otherwise," Sam teases.  "Anyhoo. Here's the game, Kara. Lena thinks that Ruby could do an ad for this new civil partnership law."

"Ooh!  Getting your little girl in the family schemes early, eh?  I like it, Lena."

Lena doesn't reply.  Sam looks at her for a moment, smiles and reaches out for Kara's hand.

"Thanks for, y'know, not murdering me.  Even as nice as you've been...that wasn't cool.  Your house, your bed? Asshole move."

Kara nods towards a still-stalled Lena.

"Worth every jealous twitch."

Ruby breezes in, muddy ankle-to-thigh from soccer practice, and hugs Lena.

"Hi, aunt Lena.  I like you being around again."

"Thanks sweetie."

Ruby kisses Lena's cheek.

"I want you to be my mom, like when Sam was pregnant," Ruby whispers in Lena's ear.  Whispers while fully aware that two women with supersenses are four feet away.

"Little cottage on the riverbank, Lena," Kara whispers.  "Soda bread in the oven.  Good book.  Blanket.  Rainy day.  The kind of wet summer that makes every last shamrock _gleam._ The simple life.  Wife, kids, pet..."

Kara tilts her head.

"Huh.  Wife or wives.  Still works."

Streaky jumps up on the table and Lena startles, knocking herself right out of her chair.

 

 

  
"What happened?" Lena groans.  "Did I?  Did I pass out?"

"Ruby wants you to be her mom," Kara replies.  "I think the feelings sort of stalled your brain."  

"Kara!  You trying to knock her back out?" Sam hollers.  "Lena's a mess right now." 

 

* * *

 

**September 20, 2006 |Television Screens and Web Browsers coast to coast.**

Lena Luthor Children's Hospital 

National City, California 

 

**"Hi.  My name is Ruby Arias.  It's just mom and me. But she has like, a really important job so she's not always available.  This is Kara and that's Lena."**

**"They're mom's friends."**

**The camera cuts to Kara kissing Lena's cheek and Sam ruffling Kara's hair.  Lena and Sam lean over a boardroom table, pointing at something on a chart. Lena settling onto Sam's couch with little more than a rose and two valentine's heart coffee mugs marking them as gay women.  Kara can be seen in the background, spreading flour all over the kitchen and muttering about "evil pizza rolls".**

**Kara chasing a fleeing politician in handcuffs, shouting questions.**

**"Kara's job is different.  She can pick me up from school every day."**

**"But today," Ruby adds, the camera panning down to show her in a hospital gown.  The hand holding her is unmistakably Kara's.**

**"Today I need to go to the doctor.  Mom is busy at a place where she can't have a phone.  If something goes wrong, Kara can't help and they won't be able to call her..."**

**Ruby fades out and is replaced by the text**

 

 **'Family should mean what** **_your family_ ** **needs.  Call Washington and tell them to vote Yes on FAMILY'.**

 

* * *

 

 

**September 20, 2006 | Alex Danvers**

Lena Luthor Children's Hospital 

National City, California. 

 

The cameras have been wheeled out and Ruby and Alex are alone.  The dull whirs, thunks and hums of the MRI are all that can be heard.

It looked scary enough, the IV line port they had Alex put in.  A hard port like that was extreme overkill for a bit of dye for the MRI scanner--a tiny line would suffice--but if it sells the product, well worth it.  To the untrained eye or the viewers at home, it looked like Ruby's first-ever checkup for her powers was a visit to a child cancer ward.

_Fucking diabolical, Lena._

"All done," Alex tells Ruby.

"Cool!"

Ruby clambers out of the MRI, squeezing on one of the railings without realizing it.  It crumples in her hand.

"Oops."

"Ruby, has your mom talked to you about...about growing up?"

Ruby stares Alex down and folds her arms.

"You mean have I had my first period?"

Alex's face goes ash-gray.

"Yeah, sure, that."

"Yes and yes.  The other da...oww!"

Ruby grinds her teeth.

"Those  _really_ hurt," she grumbles.

"Yeah, periods will do that to you," Alex sighs.

_And we've got jack-all for painkillers for Kryptonians._

Ruby looks at the door and sighs.

"Usually I pet the dog in the children's area on my way out." 

She looks are her small, caramel-skinned hands, already quite long and slender, like her mom's.  The first baby fat of Ruby's to go was on her arms and that was before her Kryptonian blood became evident.

"But I can't.  I don't even know how strong I am.  I might hurt Sprinkles."

_Of course she knows its name._

Alex nods.

"I have an idea.  You eat this ice cream--if you crush it, it's fine--and I'll make a phone call."

 

* * *

 

**September 20th | Lillian Luthor**

Eastern Europe 

Black site run by Kryptonian Imperial Destroyer Squad "Hammer of Dawn" 

 

They turned the TV on, at least.  That's something. These creatures that have Lillian seem to only care that she is alive and uninjured.  They have, however, switched it to a liberal news network -- CatCo -- just to irritate her.

 

 

> **"New polling suggests the FAMILY act will pass the House and Senate.  President Obama has vowed to sign it, even going so far as to say that if this law costs him the 2008 election, he would sign it.  Washington, DC and thousands of non-traditional families wait with baited breath. Should FAMILY pass, they will be able to create contracts that confer medical rights, educational rights, custody of children, joint tax statements, and so on."**
> 
> **"I'm Siobahn Smythe.  Back to Rose in the Studio."**
> 
> **"And I'm Rose Ritchie.  This is ZigZag, bringing you the news you need to navigate the world of straight people.  Good night, Gay America…"**

Lillian grabs her spare bedsheet and struggles to get one arm free in her shackles.  With a huge heave, she throws the bedsheet over the TV, covering it up.

"Not bad, Lena," Lillian sighs.  "Not bad at all. Using that poor child as cannon fodder?  I'd almost say you were a Luthor."

_And these monsters will bring me right to Kara for 'justice'.  Let's see how popular she is after she puts me down in broad daylight._

Lillian has plans, but if her death poisons the well for aliens, that's all that matters.

 


	40. Fathers and Daughters (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":  
> Where Lena still needs a hug, Alex has suspicions, Maggie is shook, Alex fesses up, Vasquez and Maggie share some pain, and Lena steps up.
> 
> OUR NEXT EXCITING EPISODE:  
> Winn gets an ambassadorship, Kara checks her voicemail, Lena owns up to both her family names, and Worldkillers need love too!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: 
> 
> I'm trying something new: multipart chapters. For example, this chapter will focus on the children (Lena, Kara, Alex) processing their relationships with their fathers / parents and the plot consequences thereof. It will be delivered in multiple slices.
> 
> Each slice will be part of a larger whole but delivered more often in what will usually be 1,000-5,000 word bites. Any multipart chapters will have (Part X) in the title such as "Part 1". You guys get more frequent story posts, I get more frequent comments...everyone gets their fix sooner :-) 
> 
> Once a given multipart chapter is completed, we will get the usual "Breaking News" piece.

###  **September 25, 2006 | Lena Luthor**

National City, California 

L-Tech Solutions 

105th floor, Lena Luthor’s Apartment 

 

"Kara," Lena whispers.  "I need to get up."

"No," Kara pouts.  She closes her arms further around Lena's middle and fidgets around, lifting her head and trying this pillow or that, trying to get comfortable.  Which she does, much to Lena's embarrassment.

"Mmm.  Boobs are soft," Kara sighs.  "S'nice."

"Sam got up an hour ago," Lena scolds.  "I need to get up."

"Actually," Kara purrs, lifting her head from Lena's breasts and settling it on her belly.  "Everything about you is soft."

"I'm wearing a Kryptonite-laced nightgown tomorrow if you don't let me up," Lena teases.

"Spoilsport."

Kara's arms loosen enough for Lena to escape but not enough to avoid a lazy dragging of long, powerful fingers across her hips, thighs and butt.  Just before she is completely free, Kara's hands close, pinning Lena with one broad palm around her left hip, gripping like a vise and another cupping her mound through the nightgown, soft as a silk ribbon.

Kara groans and Lena doesn't bother trying to hide her own whimper.

"I miss that," Kara sighs, pulling back and covering her eyes with her arm.  "I miss showing you how much I loved you. How sexy you are. It was good for you too, right?"

In her surprise, Lena puts her foot down so hard she misses the slipper and instead slams her foot into her high heels from last night, destroying it.  Destroying the last one.

 _It saved my life, Kara,_ she thinks.  _The way you touched me...like I was worthy of it._

"It was, darling.  Every time."

"Good."

Kara props herself up on her elbows and the blanket falls away.  

Lena has always prided herself on willpower.  When Lillian would beat her, she refused to cry.  When Lex went mad, she refused to feel sorry for herself.  There were true victims, after all. When Lillian murdered thousands she refused to make excuses.

When she cheated on Kara, she refused to ever let herself touch another woman.

Now though, with indigo satin pooled around her bare torso and sweat beaded on her skin, Kara is more than hard to resist.  She is suffering. Not touching her is suffering. Not slinging her legs over Kara's chest and begging for Kara's fingers inside her is suffering.  Torture.

Those golden eyes are watching her, the twinkle in them dimmed, tears gathering at the edges.  Lena's stomach knots.

_That hurt.  I did that._

"I'll wait for you, Lena.  Sam too. We're not going to grab some other woman just because you're being so talaq-fucking stubborn.  I don't want other women. Just you and Sam."

Lena chuckles.

"What is a talaq, love?  You've never told me."

Kara scratches her head.  Her glorious silver braid is gone, replaced by a pleasant, but still thin fluff.  Kara's skin weathered his nuclear trap but most of her hair did not. Like a human's, it was dead cells except for the very closest layer.  The hair was mortal, having been too long separated from the goddess' flesh.

Lena remembers the braid vividly.  The first few nights, nothing else gave her a way to push back.  Nothing but the braid. It was so long, she could get the tip of it in her fist even while her mouth was on Kara's slit.  A tug here. A yank there. Kara would whimper and moan and whine. Soften. Comply.

_Lex's worst crime was destroying her hair._

"Scorpion slash snake slash rat?" Kara finally suggests.  "Most of the life on Krypton was reptilian or reptile-analog.  Only a few of the most recently-evolved species had smooth skin or hair."

Kara holds her hands perhaps a foot apart.

"Yea long.  Diamond-shaped scales.  Gray or brown, usually. Four locomotive legs but the other four had fused into a pair of spring-loaded claws.  Like a crab. The claws could move fast. In humid enough air, it would make a crack. Underwater, it made a little plasma burst.  Like pistol shrimp. Slightly venomous. Hardly anything could withstand the claws but certain fish they preyed on could, so they had neurotoxic venom.  Hardly did anything unless it went into nerve cells. So they instinctively strike _down_ when on land and _up_ in the water, trying to get the claws into the fish's brain."

"Pest species?" Lena asks as she slides an arm into her jacket.  "Sounds like one."

"Eh.  Durable and adaptable.  Not innately vicious though.  Didn't carry diseases.  They preyed on some of the worst insect pests, so some people kept them as pets.  Weirdos like me. Let me," Kara jokes.

She is over in a blur.  Lena's breath catches before she registers Kara's fingers on her collar.  Her body knows. Somewhere deep in her brain, a connection was made that static electricity means sex.  It means Kara has broken all but a handful of laws of physics to be by Lena's side.

Pavlov's dogs drooled at the sound of a bell.  Lena's sex drools at the feel of static on her skin.  

Her forebrain does not get a vote.  

Self-discipline is something that happens in a different lobe.

Each motion Kara makes is slow.  Turn down, smooth. Turn down, smooth.  Each time part the collar of the blouse is folded back, Kara follows it with a kiss.

"The Luthor name never deserved you, Lena.  _Gra mo chroi._   _Shak'atun_."  <"Love of my heart." | Irish aka Gailege.>  <"Soul's fire." | Ajatkar> 

Kara sighs.

"The House of El hardly deserves you and we have worked wonders on a thousand worlds."

"Good thing the House of El doesn't have me, then," Lena snaps.  "Better that way."  

"Oh," Kara breathes in her ear, her voice dark and her breath hot and wet.  "I disagree. We will call you our own, _filteach beag_.  We will."  <"Little raven" |  Galiege a.k.a Irish>

"I'll carve that 'L' in the logo right into the house sigil.  Have faith, Lena. Not so long from now, on this or some other world, a prince or princess will stand atop their citadel," Kara promises, tracing Lena's face with her fingertips.  "Looking down at a city that flourishes under the protection of the House of Luthor-El.  Looking out at the world with eyes of gold, hair of silver, a face cut like a diamond, skin like snow."

"Don't promise me that," Lena pleads.  "Never offer me that.  I have to be the last, Kara."

"What would my child be?" she moans.  "What else _could_ it be?  A monster."

"A genius," Kara whispers.  "A rebel, perhaps.  A good person."

"We'll work on it together, Lee.  Once you feel you deserve it, I would be honored to marry you.  But not before. I never want to be the cause of one shred of your guilt."

Lena crumples, as if the first tear had broken her back.  She sinks to the ground, Kara following her. She is surrounded with sinew and skin, dark and hard as mahogany.  Warm as a fireplace on a winter afternoon.

"Shh," Kara coos.  "When you need it, _please_ let me carry you."

The shriek Lena lets out holds everything.  Lillian's fists. Lex's manic explanations and his wild eyes.  Ten thousand innocents dead because her mother could not bear Lena's disobedience.   A dozen innocents dead because they worked for her.

Screams and sobs bounce off glass and countertops and floors.

Lena feels consciousness fading.  Perhaps she can die now.

Only she can't die, not pressed close to Kara's chest.  Not with her own hair dotted with her lover's tears. Not with the heartbeat of the woman she loves so close.  All she can hear.

 

 


	41. Fathers and Daughters (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":  
> Where Lena still needs a hug, Alex has suspicions, Maggie is shook, Alex fesses up, Vasquez and Maggie share some pain, and Lena steps up.
> 
> OUR NEXT EXCITING EPISODE:  
> Winn gets an ambassadorship, Kara checks her voicemail, Lena owns up to both her family names, and Worldkillers need love too!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Some homophobic language that Maggie has internalized (and reclaimed) present.

###  **September 25, 2006 | Alex Danvers**

Midvale, Maryland 

Seaspray Bed and Breakfast, "Crows Nest" Suite 

 

Alex stares at her cell phone.  Her last orders from soon-to-be-retired Gen. Mitchell.  Cryptic as all hell, sent at 3:11 in the morning and using the priority contact system, meaning that the Pentagon-issued ringtone was used.  Alex was on her feet and halfway to her gear before she registered that it was a ringtone, not a bugler blowing reveille.

**Blacksmith:  Golf Tango Golf, Whisky-Kilo.**

She chews on her cheek for a long time before replying.

**White Knight:  Say again?**

**Blacksmith:  I recruited you for your competence, woman!  Sort your shit out. Blacksmith signing off.**

There’s an attachment on the text.  Alex pulls it up and sees an intricate tactical map complete with paths of approach, enemy forces and areas of operation.

“Heh,” she laughs.  “Thanks, boss.”

She feels like a bullet just went through her lungs.  She can’t get enough air, no matter how she tries. Trying is painful.  Maggie is snuggled into her, still-damp hair everywhere, her skin scrubbed to a wholesome brown gleam.

“Morning,” Alex whispers, kissing Maggie’s forehead.

“G’back to sleep,” Maggie groans.

“You got up to shower,” Alex reminds her.

“Shush.  If you’d ever seen Alex Danvers naked, you’d damn well put your best foot forward,” Maggie jokes.

[Echo?]

[I’m here, Alex.]

[Have you consulted with Flannel?]

[Yes.  Full biorhythm analysis, cross-checked with recent fMRI studies and behavior surveys.  Chance of success north of 50%.]

[Transmat the casket, Echo.  And send a request for access paperwork and form DEO-817T for Maggie to Anvil Base.]

“Mags?”

“Mmm. Pretty woman no talky,” Maggie whines.

“Mags.  I need you to actually wake up.  And get dressed. We should talk.”

Maggie’s eyes snap open and Alex can practically see her thoughts.  Granted, Maggie’s pattern of insecurity and self-doubt is especially strong in relationships.  It’s hardly secret and the abuse her father put her through could hardly have resulted in anything else. 

Doctor Alex knows that.

It still breaks Girlfriend Alex’s heart to see those bottomless eyes so wide and those luscious caramel cheeks quivering.

“Why?” Maggie asks.

“Clothes first,” Alex whispers.  “Please?”

They dress in silence, Maggie’s breathing growing quicker and shallower by the moment.

“This good enough?” Maggie sniffs.

Looking up, Alex sees that she’s fully dressed.  Ready to grab her Honda and ride it home.

“Fuck’s sake…” Alex groans. “Lose the jacket.  And the boots. Pants are your call.”

“Oh.  Not that kind of a talk, then.”

“Yeah,” Alex huffs.  “Not that kind.”

[Transmat complete, Alex.  Pillowcase on Maggie’s side of the bed.]

Alex reaches behind her, rummages through the pillowcase and finds it.  Palming it before Maggie can get much of a look, Alex holds out her hand.

“Margarita Theresa Rojas,” Alex whispers.

Whispering her name took more out of Alex’s lungs than a ten-mile jog around Fort Benning ever did.

“Will you marry me?”

Maggie's trembling hand covers her mouth.  Tears flow into her dimples.

"I want to," Maggie moans.  "But I can't say yes right now.  Not until I know everything."

Alex holds her breath.

Setting the box down beside her, Alex stands and gathers Maggie into her arms.

"What do you need, honey?"

Maggie shivers against her.

"You have a second life, Alex.  For all I know, you have a side girl," Maggie jokes.

"Do you think I'm that competent at gaying?" Alex teases.

"No," Maggie snorts.  "But still.  Your military life.  I need to see it."

[Echo?]

[Maggie's security clearance paperwork is pending.  Typical turnaround is ten days.]

[Echo...I need options, damnit!  I am not losing her and stalling her looks like I'm hiding something.]

[Stand by.]

"You know I want to, Mags."

 _I really hope she's okay with me quasi-adopting those poor kids,_ Alex worries.

[The Rhinos, Alex.  The K'Hund gang members.]

[What of them?]

[Under K'Hund warrior law, a clan leader bested in combat must be stripped of his title.  He must be shamed or he must submit, pledging himself and his soldiers to a new clan.]

[And…]

[And Maggie stood him down and dropped him in mid-charge.  No one else on the field.  Single combat.  Even when his remaining kinetic energy might have killed her.  Then she 'mounted him' by stepping upon his body. All she needs to do is claim it.  Any information he has on his criminal associates would then be hers to share.]

_That's my girl._

[Echo…]

[I have orders for Jailer.  We have a new consultant.]

 

* * *

 

###  **September 25, 2006  | Maggie Sawyer**

United States Space Force / United States Space Corps Headquarters 

"Terra Firma Station"  (Administration, Research, Infantry Training, Prison, Interstellar Communications Center) 

Arizona, Cochise County (21 miles from Tombstone) (1/2 of a mile above the USSF'S "Anvil" bunker)

 

"You good?" Alex asks.

Maggie nods quickly. 

"Remember the rules?"

Maggie nods again. 

Alex kisses her.

"You'll do great."

Maggie nods so quickly she's worried her too-full head will flop off.

It's like coming out all over again.  Everything her brain takes in has a different tint to it now.  Everything is filtered through new truths and new possibilities.

At breakfast this morning, they watched while the president ordered a halt to all administrative processes surrounding Don't Ask Don't Tell.  No one will be discharged and any paperwork on the topic will be stuffed in a drawer for the foreseeable future.

Eliza's shit-eating grin the entire time was proof enough that she was involved.

Senate Republicans sued within minutes.  

Then a glitter-doused Fourth of July parade was unleashed on anything with a screen.  The campaign centered on Alex's fireteam and infomercials of interviews with famous vets about their gay friends, even managing to dig up a World War I vet, by some miracle.  Woven in with those ads was a documentary expose in thirty-second bites, peeling back every rotten fruit in the bunch.  Senators and congressmen from a dozen states scrambled to separate themselves from pastors quoted in the videos.  

The junior senator from New Mexico swiftly butchered two bills that would have brought big bucks to the red states.  She did it while wearing her Navajo mother's bracelet and a _sparkly_ and blue, pink and purple striped blazer...the bisexual flag, in zoot suit form.  She stood out in a seat of old white men like a neon sign.  Maggie's leaving that one open; Natalie Proud always wears that to her day job.  Not two hours after his donors got their highway money snatched away, Senator McConnell himself announced the legal team's retreat. 

Whoever paid for that ad campaign spent as much as some presidential campaigns.  So the mastermind was loaded, connected and in the know because first the web and television ads hit mere minutes after it was clear that Alex's job was safe. 

_Lena, no question._

Kara has been all over the news today, shoring up defenses in Iraq and in one case, getting a sloppy kiss on the cheek from a blood-caked and clearly delirious female Marine she was carrying out of the debris.

 _Sam._   Sam bothers Maggie.  She hasn't sussed out where Sam fits into the scheme and the detective part of her brain is sore from trying.

When she poured her coffee this morning, Maggie was resigned to a closeted life, something she never would have considered before.  Something no one but Alex could ever justify.

By the time she finished buttering her toast -- and, in her confusion, buttering her own hand -- Alex could claim her.  Publicly.  By the time one of L-Tech's new auto-piloted aircraft picked them up at the Midvale airport for their flight to Phoenix, their entire family had done their part to clear the path.  Maggie will become one of fewer than a dozen civilians to set foot here...on the commanding officer's arm, no less.

Looming in front of them is the hollowed-out carcass of a mountain.  Tunnels blasted into the stone by silver miners and copper miners have been widened, straightened and repurposed.   Straight ahead are a pair of blast doors, each the size of Precinct 18's entire building. Soldiers jog in the fading daylight and a pilot is practicing their takeoff, lifting their strange, silent craft a hundred feet up before landing and repeating it.  Somewhere under their feet is an entire underground city, one Alex says was meant to be the heart of any human counter-attack after an invasion.

As the humvee rolls towards the gate, a gizmo on the dash lights up and what feels like a blast of winter air passes over Maggie's skin.  Every hair stands up.

 _Forcefield,_ she realizes, _Like what Kara built for her mom's house._

Alex leans close.

"Back pocket, babe.  Your side. Key to my bunk, in case you get overwhelmed."

"Thanks," Maggie mumbles.

The sentry salutes Alex and something in Maggie's insides flutters.

_My girl.  My girl is in charge of him.  This whole place._

"Welcome back, ma'am."

"Civilian with me," Alex replies, holding out Maggie's ID.

The kid looks at the driver's license and back to Maggie, who has so far failed in her efforts to sink into the seat and disappear.  

"Step out, please, miss."

"What did I do?" Maggie squeaks.

Alex squeezes her thigh.

"Nothing."

"Then why am I getting out?"

"Standard procedure, babe. Bomb-sniffing dog and a metal detector."

"Oh," Maggie mumbles.  "It's just, when cops pull people over…"

"Yeah," Alex chuckles.  "We're more suspicious than you guys."

A crew-cut servicewoman with a scanner wand and a bomb dog in body armor with a suspiciously-scratched tag around its neck check Maggie out.

"You like superheroes, girl?" Maggie jokes.

The kid holding the leash gives her a dirty look.

"Tag has an 'S' on it," she adds.

"No idea what you're talking about," he grumbles, his ears reddening and his eyes avoiding Alex.  "Standard issue dog, standard-issue tag."

"Clean," he shouts to the gate guard.

The humvee glides along towards the main gate.  Maggie can hear her own pulse, she's so freaked out.

As they get close, Maggie sees two strange figures.  Teenaged girls, one young and one barely past girlhood.  One blue-skinned, lean and slouching.  One red-skinned, with four arms, large black eyes and a ramrod posture.  She's already more muscular than the soldiers to either side of her, though she's shorter.  They're both wearing Silver and blue athletic gear.  

Alex opens her door and there's a blur, a sound like thunder and four ruby-skinned arms are hugging Alex and a hairless head is tucked under her chin.

"Hi, Jackie," Alex sighs, patting the girl on the back.  "Missed you."

"Hi, mom."

_Mom?_

"What the hell, Alex?" Maggie shouts.

Taking advantage of her confusion, the other girl has thrown her arms around Maggie.  This is the closest Maggie's ever been to a thessie and it's extremely distracting, all softness and curves and with a smell like smoke and dark chocolate.  Maggie has a scary hunch this girl is more a daughter than anything, which makes it worse.  She has to keep this beautiful girl -- her daughter -- safe in a world that will never want anything but her looks.

"Hi, Maggie."

"Hi?"

"I'm Mya.  Mya Ktenno."

"Okay..."

"Alex takes care of me."

"Yeah, I figured that out," Maggie grumbles.

The girl lets go and backs off so that she can look Maggie in the eye. 

_Danvers Academy sweatshirt.  That'll be Aunt Kara's little prank, I suspect._

Two copper-colored eyes with S-shaped pupils like a snake stare back at Maggie, giving none of the usual clues a human would.  The smile though…  The smile the girl gives her makes Maggie's heart dance giddily against her ribs.

"She told us about you," Jackie adds from the other side of the truck.  She is using all four hands to cling to Alex with all her might.  "Lots of things. She missed you. Every day she was here."

"Sorry, Maggie," Alex mumbles, her face darker and redder than her hair.

There's another crack and another blur and the red-skinned one -- Jackie, was it? -- is all over Maggie now.

"Oof.  Hi, there."

_Wow.  Lots to unpack in a raxxie bear-hug._

"I think..." Jackie murmurs.  "Think my mom..."

She inhales sharply. 

"My mom would be glad I find you, Black give her rest."

_Right, orphaned alien thinks I'm her mom now..._

Maggie looks over at Alex who is giving orders to some man in dress uniform with a clipboard...despite a tomato-red blush.

"This dirty trick of yours is so going in the wedding toast," Maggie snarls.

It takes every ounce of training Alex has not to whoop, to keep her mask on her face and the stiffness in her posture while she doles out orders to fix the screwups made while she was gone.   Maggie sees it though.  Sees the wiggle of the hips, the little fidget her girlfriend -- fiancee! -- does when she's excited. 

"Marg-r-ita,” Jackie sounds out, her English clearly still a work in progress and lisped through rows of fangs.

Blue Springs, Nebraska taught her she would never have a moment's peace.  Love? For someone like Maggie? A pipe dream. Family? The stars would spin backwards before God let a Latina dyke have something that simple and that good.

_God didn't give me this, though.  Alex did._

"Alex?" Maggie sniffs.  "About earlier?  Yes. Yes, and thank you."

With both of her daughters and their many arms wrapped around her, Maggie cries.


	42. Fathers and Daughters (Part 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":  
> Where Lena still needs a hug, Alex has suspicions, Maggie is shook, Alex fesses up, Vasquez and Maggie share some pain, and Lena steps up.
> 
> OUR NEXT EXCITING EPISODE:  
> Winn gets an ambassadorship, Kara checks her voicemail, Lena owns up to both her family names, and Worldkillers need love too!

###  **September 28, 2006 | Lena Luthor**

National City, California 

L-Tech Solutions 

98th Floor, C-Suite Offices, CEO's Office 

 

"Can I get you anything?" Lena asks Alex.

Alex shakes her head.

This is beyond strange.  Alex has yet to say which business she's here on.  

_Military request?  Personal call? Big sister rant?_

Lena has had generals by the dozen in her offices since she summarily ended LuthorCorp's weapons production.  Her excuse was Lex's criminality and the need for review but she's been dragging her feet. Making sure L-Tech is in a position to produce cruise missiles is far, far, far below 'count every hair on Kara's body' in her task list.

She never had a service head in her office before.  Besides which, she doubts that any of the gray-hairs running the other five branches have Alex's eerie ability to watch her surroundings without the tiniest flick of motion.

"You need to start fucking my sister again," Alex blurts out.

Lena sprays a mouthful of smoothie all over her laptop, which promptly sparks and dies.

"Sorry," Alex mumbles.  "I…Lena. It's clear you're still together.  Maybe therapy? Don't know. There's a lot of whining.  It's a topic I'm not comfortable hearing about. I need there to not be any more whining from Kara, at least about this topic, I mean, it's fine when she rambles usually but this is not what I want to focus on," Alex rambles.

"Are we clear on this?"

Lena swallows her retort.

_I see how she orders soldiers around…_

Alex clicks open her briefcase and hands Lena a beat-up iPad.  It's an older model and whole chunks of the heavy-duty case are torn off.

"For your Lantern ring," Alex explains.  "Most recently trained Green Lantern on Earth is a former seventh-grade teacher named Jessica Cruz.  She got the cold shoulder from the higher-ups so she had to figure most of it out herself. Says you can have her notes if you can keep Kara from beating her up."

Lena snatches the iPad up with all the grace of a toddler grabbing candy.

"Thank you, Alex."

"Don't thank me, thank my sister," Alex jokes.

She stands up and adjusts her uniform, tugging the hard-plated vest so that it disappears completely under the starched fabric of the coat.  The usual buttons and insignia are absent. Two titanium plates have name and rank and a small panel of hardened crystal on the left breast displays Alex's medals through a bank of LEDs. 

The sidearm on Alex's hip is also unlike the old men that come into her office.  Alex came armed and came alone. Importance to the system isn't what keeps her safe.  Skills and courage do.

"Shadowside?" Lena asks, nodding towards the gun.

It may be matte black rather than beetle-green and it doesn't seem to have the transmat and nanite dispensers like the one in Lena's purse, but it's the same gun.  The protective glove Alex's wearing on her left hand is just like Lena's.

"Officially, it's the XPDW-3.  Unofficially, yes. The test unit.  Hand-assembled."

Lena raises a brow.

"Really?  Shouldn't you have a production unit?"

"Surprised my sister isn't knocked up yet," Alex mutters.  "Put the eyebrow away, I'm going already," she laughs.

 _Knocked up?_ Lena wonders.

She doesn't realize what two words took out of her until Jess is knocking on her door.

"It's four o'clock, Miss Luthor.  Do you need anything for me for tomorrow?"

Lena starts, her gazes wheeling across the room until it lands on Jess.  

 _Jess._   Safe, ordinary, supportive, entirely-too-much-like-a-big-sister Jess.

"No, thank you.  Enjoy your date."

Jessica ducks her head.

One day at lunch, Jess launched into a rant about Tinder and the men on it.  A rant with enough froth and bile to strip paint.  

The next day, Lena made full use of the tight network of female executives she knows across the country.  They, in turn, made use of office gossip and their own friend circles. Apparently a woman like Jess is a better catch than she gives herself credit for.

Lena left the post it on Jess's desk _sans_ explanation so it would seem less like pity.  She had no idea whose phone number it was until she called it.  

Luthors are plotters.  Schemers. Masterminds.  Something deep down in Lena was pleased when she peeked out her door to see Jess leaning her head into her cell phone, playing with her hair and laughing at a joke.

"Banshee?" Lena asks the empty air next to her computer monitor.

"Yes, Miss Luthor?"

"How much can you tell me about Kryptonian reproductive biology?"

"I have access to one hundred and forty thousand years of patient records, chart summaries, research studies and standardized procedures," Banshee replies. "Plus partial records from before the Medical Guild was formed."

"I see."

Banshee shifts her position, rising so that her plasma thrusters don't even singe the papers on Lena's desk.

"But I think I know the question you're asking, Lena.  Yes. With or without artificial intervention, she could carry a child.  Blood transfusion, uterine, vaginal muscle or ovarian tissue, delivered into the uterus or a skin cutting, placed or implanted in the upper birth canal.  Five to seven Earth days after Lady Zor-El's ovulatory cycle. Those are the best methods, aside from a birthing matrix. You could carry also, following the use of a Chrysalis chamber."

_I suppose the baby kicking could be messy for a human.   Fatal, perhaps. So why do I want it? Why does the idea of her child taking its first breath in my arms sound so amazing?_

Lena scrubs her wet eyes with her fists and blows out a long breath.

 _Because I remember my birth mother,_ Lena realizes. _I remember her face when I was in her arms.  Only thing I remember, really._

"Bear in mind of course, that any child produced using only natural means would be a daughter and closer to two-thirds Kara genetically.   At least absent any genetic enhanc-"

"Stop!" Lena shouts, before the robot can terrify her any more.

"Can you call Kara?"

"Of course, Lady Luthor."

  


After a few month of practice, Lena can step out of a transmat energy plume as easily as she can shake her umbrella on a rainy day.

Calling Kara became an invite to a picnic with her and Sam.  Sounds like the exact thing Lena needs to sweeten the sting of the talk she needs to have with them.

“Babe!” Kara squeals, blurring over to Lena.

Static dances along Lena’s skin as Kara leans her head forward.  

“I want more, Lee.  But if this is all I ever get...I’ll stay.  You’ll be worth it.”

Forehead to forehead, Lena inhales Kara.  Draws in her scent and her presence and her power.  Banshee has been briefing her on Worldkiller grafts.  A small galaxy could have been wrought with the same force it took to make Kara.  She’s in the arms of a miracle.

_Perhaps the universe doesn’t hate me…_

Lena doesn’t recognize the room but she spots a file cabinet from Kara’s apartment that’s usually open and stuffed with half-crumpled papers is now shut and locked and a small stack sits atop it in the to-shred pile.

“What are you hiding?” Lena demands.

“Nothing!” Kara squeaks.

“Oof!  Eyebrows and the smirk?  No fair!”

“I’m a Luthor, darling.  Never claimed I’d play fair.”

Kara smiles.

“Kolex, show Lena what I’m up to.”

“At once.”

“Have a seat, Lena.”

Kolex decloaks and projects an image on the wall.  On all three of the walls in front of them. Star-maps and waveforms from the incoming transmissions and a map of the Earth sharing a display with a map of the Milky Way.

“What’s this?” Lena asks.  “Matter of fact, where am I?”

“Diaspora,” Kara replies.  “An arcology in the central Pacific.  International waters. I took a couple of the largest wrecks and hacked it together.”

“Kolex, lower blast shutters.”

Immense plates of gray-green metal slide away, revealing a floating city beneath them.  It fills her vision. She has to crane her neck to see the water beyond it. A huge ring with seven spokes cut from some massive columns or the central chassis of a huge spaceship.  Lights twinkle on landing pads and robot attendants trim exotic plants and fluff banners that wave in the equatorial breeze.

“Kolex, pull up the city map for Lena.”

From a distance, the whole thing has the shape of a spindle or a child’s top.  The mechanical space below the waterline is twice the size of the city itself. Dozens of cubes the size buildings ring the outside edge.  Inside the perimeter, the buildings vary from twenty-story apartment blocks to ornate auditoriums and stadiums. In the center, a series of skyscrapers rise.  

Lena can see the shorter towers when she walks to the window, their slanted roofs blending into this building’s walls.  

“It’s amazing, Kara.”

“Spaceframes from nine ultra-heavy freighters, reworked by Koncave and Konvex to form the base and the structural.  The towers and the buildings are the midsize ships. Used every wreck I could get my hands on for machinery and raw material for the reactors.  Kept reactor cores and engines when they were compatible. I called in a favor my house is owed and got a seed kit for Rakni-Xinda bioengineering.  Grew the rest as techno-organic plating and conduits. Parked it on top of an algal bloom to give it biomass for the final coat of paint.”

“Raxxie tech?” Lena asks.  “Self-healing?”

Kara nods.

“Space for 100 million at max capacity.  At that point, it’s just bunks, medical clinics, and hydroponics but at least it’s safe.  Five to twenty million otherwise. With a smaller population, we can have shops and public squares and factories and concert halls.”

“Why build this?” Lena asks.  “In addition to Mael’Thoran?”

Kara inhales.

“Lena...if you never want to have sex again, please refrain from speaking Ajatkar.  Ever. I’ll not be responsible for any desperate lovemaking as a result of hearing those words on your tongue.”

Lena smiles despite herself and despite the veiled threat of being ravished by a being that no man on earth could resist.  Intellectually, Kara could take her against her will but the word rape feels unthinkable in that context. Being so close is enough to make Lena want to beg.  Her mind has trouble envisioning the situation where she wouldn’t want to be touched.

 _Just the smell of her,_ Lena realizes.  _And I’m a cat in heat._

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“ _Mael’Thoran_ will always be Kryptonian.  _Qyu-Esholo_ is a human nation in a legal sense.  Treaties, tariffs, the whole bit. Not everyone might want to live in a protectorate or under human law.  Not everyone can. Now that I’m a UN-recognized power, I can’t harbor certain folks. Since the US government is so desperate to get cozy with me, I can’t be fully neutral.  For other refugees, I have to do paperwork. So much paperwork!”

“This place is an unaligned city-state.  The automated defenses can prevent interpersonal violence and triage abuse and injuries but besides that, the legal code will be minimal.  Anarchy but with a safety net run by a Tier-10 AI.“

“If I take in some refugees that the Americans or the EU or the Daxamite Empire wants to have a crack at, I can tell ‘em to fuck off.  This place is for everybody and the transmat station connects to beacons all over the world and in deep orbit. Anyone in five light minutes of Earth who reaches one of those beacons has a direct route here, straight to the central bunker.”

_Five light minutes.  More than halfway from Earth to the sun._

“I did put something in the charter allowing Kryptonians to serve in the defensive corps and requiring the Navy to come to its aid if anyone fires on it from orbit.”

“Is it...is anyone here?” Lena asks.

“Not yet. I suppose it will be slow.  If I can really win people over, this place will be like a ghost town because Earth will be safe.  They can live among humans.”

“Won’t this piss someone off?” Lena asks.

“Probably,” Kara chuckles.  “If I get too much pressure, I’ll threaten to put the Pacific Garbage Patch back where I found it...and turn off the CO2 recapture system we use for fuel generation.” 

“What?” Lena shouts.  “That’s…that thing is immense.  Bigger than Texas. Millions of tons of that crap.”

 _”_ Now it’s gone.  They’ll behave if they want clean oceans and five year’s breathing room on the climate change curve.”

 _They’ll behave.  This isn’t Kara Danvers I’m speaking to,_ Lena realizes.  _This is an alien.  The scion of Erok-El.  Calling in favors and offering sanctuary.   Preparing a way to survive even if my entire species rises up against her._

““Diaspora’s first trade good will be recycled plastic.  Non-toxic and biodegradable. This city circles the edge of the gyre.  The scavenger bots sweep through it four times a day.”

Lena chuckles.

“So even in your ‘fuck you’ gesture, you decided to clean up one of humanity’s greatest ecological messes and put the brakes on another?”

“People are fine, long as they’re just people.  Nations? Religions? Boy band fan clubs? _Those_ are what scare me.”

“Walk with me?” Kara pleads.

“Sure, babe.”

Kara leads her down a long, gently sloped spiral staircase.  Neither speaks.  

“Here’s one of the resident’s gymnasiums.”

Swinging the door open, Kara gestures to reveal two women sparring in mid-air.  The smaller one darts forward, throwing her fist out and managing a glancing blow to the other’s jaw.  A shockwave billows out from the impact and stops against a force field at the edge of the ring.

“Sam?” Lena exclaims.

Lena starts walking towards her old — friend? Iover? co-parent? — but Kara catches her.

“It's not Sam right now.  Sam’s grafts contain the first Destroyer.  The prototype. Calls herself Sovereign. Because of the subliminal programming, I can order her around and bring her personality closer to the surface.  Blend it with Sam.”

“Oh, really?” Lena teases.

“Not like that!” Kara sputters.

“You sure?”

“That would be wrong, Lena.  If you want us to wear collars and leashes, you’ll need to earn it the old fashioned way…”

The image in her brain catches fire and heat rolls down Lena’s spine to her core.

_Can I be weak now?  Please? It would feel so good._

“Sovereign is disciplined and patient.  Means I can ask someone with thousands of years of experience using her powers in combat to train Ruby how not to break things.”

Lena sighs.

“Can I watch for a while?”

“Hoped you would.”

A plastic cooler appears beside them, carried by what looks like a cheaper, bare-bones version of Kolex. 

“Thank you, K1821.”

Kara opens it and retrieves Lena a Diet Coke and a corned beef sandwich.

Lena’s stomach snarls.

“Made it myself but the beef is from your food service.  No guilty feelings, Lena. Dig in.”

Lena bites the sandwich and melts into Kara’s side.  The dark thoughts shy away from the surface as if they know how mighty the woman beside her is.

_This is what makes life worth living._

   
  


Lena is stuffed with food and dozing against Kara’s side when Sovereign/Sam and Ruby finally give up.  Beaming and sweaty, Ruby beelines for Lena and scoops her into a hug.

“See?  A hug! And you’re fine!” She squeals.

“S’nice,” Lena mumbles, still half asleep.

“The hybrid did well enough,” Sovereign declares.  “She is slow but she is overcoming her injury.”

Sovereign has the lovely face and the body of Sam but she carries it differently.  Rather than feeling drool gathering in her mouth at the sight of Sam’s skin, Lena folds her arms against herself and shivers.

Her every mannerism is Alex in what she calls “tactical mindset”, turned up to eleven and enacted by an unbreakable body with planet shattering destructive power.  The little things are drained out of everything about her face and her motion and her voice.

She doesn’t look at Lena, she _tracks_ her.

She doesn’t speak, she _reports_ her findings.

She doesn’t move, she _takes_ a position.

“Ruby’s injury?” Lena asks.

“Her human bloodline.  She is learning to go around the weakness it imposes.”

“God in Heaven, that’s spooky,” Lena murmurs.

Kara stands up tall, locking eyes with this _thing_ inhabiting Sam’s mind.  She holds her hand out, palm down like she expected this living extinction event to kneel for a pat on the head like she were a golden retriever.

“Sovereign,” Kara says, voice crisp.  “Behave respectfully to Lena and Ruby or give up control.  Now, soldier.”

Sovereign dips her head and kneels before Kara.

_Her control of these beings, it's everything Lex feared, five times over._

Kara smiles down at not-Sam.

_And yet, I still want to fuck her...see what it takes to drag Sam to the surface._

“My...apologies,” Sovereign replies, stumbling through a word she's likely never spoken in English or Standard or Kryptohavli.

Kara nods.

“Better.”

“This one is Lena, yes?”

“Yes,” Kara replies.  “She is _sacred_ , do you understand?”

“I do.  There is much to like,” Sovereign decides.  “Cunning. Coldness. The will to act where others would simper and whine.  Intellect. Even as a human, she would have made a good consort for you, Ktharra of El.”

_Even as a human?_

“Wait, what?” Lena blurts out.

“I already told you that you were a high-born Kryptonian’s wet dream, Lena.”

Lena makes a note to ask Banshee if Krypton had gossip rags.  Was there a “Sexiest Kryptonian Alive” the year Kara escaped? If so, what was she like?

“With the Lantern ring on her, you could never find a better choice.  I will release Samantha now,” Sovereign decides. “Call on me when you wish.”

Sam’s body drops and before she goes face-first onto the foam-padded metal of the deck, she catches herself.  Floating face-down not even an inch from the floor, Sam sticks out her tongue and licks it.

The force expressed by the tip of her tongue combines with a Kryptonian body’s callous disregard for Earth’s gravity, pushing Sam up to a hovering position a few inches above the floor.

“Ew!” Ruby squeals.  “Gross.”

“I would’ve used my fingers,” Kara sighs.  “Unless it wasn’t the _floor_ I was licking.”

“Ugh,” Ruby groans.  “Later, weirdos. I’m going to go chill in the hangar.”

“Kara?” Sam hints.

“Worst thing in there is a _Firesnake_ -class.  Didn’t install the weapons yet.”

Sam waves her arms at Kara.

“So what?”

Kara ducks her head.

“Oh!  Right I will tell Kolex to disable the main engines.”

Kara’s eyes flick towards Lena, followed by Sam’s brown, gentle gaze.

“Lena?  I feel like you’re more ready, darling.”

“Tomorrow,” Lena decides.  “If you’re willing. There’s a talk we have to have first.  Then I want us to sleep on it.”

“Fair enough,” Sam sighs.  “I can be a grownup for one more day.”

“Don’t be surprised if I’m wrist-deep in you the moment you’re awake,” Kara teases.  

“Long as you leave me her neck,” Sam warns.

“Tastiest  part of the bird, isn’t it?” Kara chuckles.

“Enough!” Lena snaps.  “Quit trying to hurry things along.”

“Sit, please,” Lena tells Sam.

She pulls her knees up to her chin.

“First, I hope it’s obvious that I have feelings — strong feelings — for both of you.  And, obviously, for Ruby. I jus-”

Lena inhales mid-word and never tries to finish the sentence.

“You have trouble loving yourself, Lena,” Kara sighs, pressing her lips to Lena’s temple.  “Makes it hard to accept our love.”

“I suppose,” Lena agrees.

“More importantly, there’s a child to consider.  Ruby’s childhood cannot become a victim to our sex drives or our gay drama.  Full stop.”

“I’ve been a neglected child,” Lena shudders.  “Hell, I was until Lillian went on the run. That’s...that’s where monsters come from.”

“So,” Sam sighs.  “What you’re telling me is I get to fuck the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen and I get to wake up and look at her every morning, but the price for it is that I have to keep raising my little girl?”

“Yes,” Lena replies, her lip curling.  “You have to do the two things you love most in life. Sex and motherhood.”

Sam holds out her hand.

“Deal.  I’ll send over the contract in the morning.”

“Oh god,” Lena snorts.

“Kara?” Sam asks.  “You’ve been uncharacteristically dim.  Less ramble, less sunshine.”

Kara sucks in a sudden breath.

“Yeah.  There’s...there’s a thing I have to do.  But in the meantime, know that I love you both more than life itself.”

Kolex’s interface lights up in Kara’s neck and they hold some silent, intense conversation with each other, even to the point of taxing his power source so hard it flickers.

"Promise me that neither of you will fall alseep tonight without coming to my apartment first?"

"Uh, sure?" Sam mumbles, glancing at Lena.

Lena shrugs.  She's gotten used to Kara having very important and very inscrutable plans.

"Of course, dear."


	43. Fathers and Daughters (Part 4)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON "CRASHING TO EARTH":  
> Where Lena still needs a hug, Alex has suspicions, Maggie is shook, Alex fesses up, Vasquez and Maggie share some pain, and Lena steps up.
> 
> OUR NEXT EXCITING EPISODE:  
> Winn gets an ambassadorship, Kara checks her voicemail, Lena owns up to both her family names, and Worldkillers need love too!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE #1:  
> Little Sparta is a neighborhood in Metropolis that contains the justice league campus, the Themiscyran and Atlantean embassies, and the home of several magical creatures who regularly engage in business with Zatanna and others. Much as Little Italy is where the Italians live, this is the neighborhood where all the buff gay ladies with swords live. 
> 
> AUTHOR'S NOTE #2:  
> I am using the origin story for the Amazons where they are the souls of murdered women and clay from the lake bed on Themyscira, brought to life by the Patrons (Hera, Athena, Aphrodite, Hestia, and Artemis). After Wonder Woman left the island, some others chose to follow her lead, though for them it is a one-way journey. These are often widows or older Amazons who had fewer ties to the island. They retain their superhuman strength and lack of aging, though they are severed from the other magical effects of the island. 
> 
> AUTHOR'S NOTE #3:  
> Nyssa Al-Ghul is known in the League of Assasins for having blue eyes, unlike most of the league who are of African, South American or South Asian descent. She feathers her arrows with bluejay feathers as a calling card. It is an idea she got from her lover, Ta-er al-Shafer (the yellow bird or "the Canary") who is Sara Lance of Earth 38.

###  **September 30, 2006 | Lena Luthor**

Metropolis, So'easties Neighborhood on Wentworth Island (AKA Little Sparta) 

Justice League Campus 

Garden of Heroes 

 

One velvet rope and six paces away from this folding chair sits Wonder Woman, Donna Troy and Artemis.  Flanking Donna Troy like they expect their kid sister to misbehave. The older Amazons take up so much space -- so many muscles! -- that they were given seven chair widths for three chairs compared to the rest of the audience.

Despite the fact that her clit has been on fire with some flashback to twelve-year-old Lena, Amazon's autobiographies, and her homemade vibrators, Lena's fairly sure her everything from her toenail polish to her eyelashes are having a panic attack.  

_So much goodness.  I don't deserve this._

"Ma'am?"

"Ah!" Lena shrieks.

"Refreshments?" the server asks.

The server is a golden-skinned, dark-haired reed of a woman in a knee-length robe of white linen and holding a tray of copper goblets and small bunches of grapes. Slung around her back is a short bow with arms entirely too shiny to be made of wood.  

 _Chromed steel_ , Lena suspects.  

Meaning that no human arm could draw it back to full tension and that any arrow fired from it would hit, quite literally, like a speeding Buick.

" _Efcharistó_ ," Lena replies, taking a goblet.  < "Thank you" | Greek (modern) > 

As if driven by some uncanny six sense, the girl places a second goblet next to Lena in the next chair.  She indicates the chair beside it.

"May I?"

"Please."

"I wanted to thank you."

"God knows I'm not worth that."

"God might," the server sighs.  "But he's known to be partial to violent men.  Just ask the Bible."

"Goddesses disagree.  Lex and his minions tried to invade Themyscira once, two years ago.  He sent five of our sisters back to the bosom of the waters before we broke him down and threw him into the sea.   Including my lover who was unarmed. Tending to our wounded. A second death at the hands of a madman. A blood debt was owed.  I doubted it could be paid, not while he was in Man's world. Then I hear about his sister, betraying him, seeing to it he lives the rest of his life in chains."

The woman's hand squeezes Lena's thigh.

"Women were wronged and a woman worked our justice.  It's how my Aclespia would have wanted it. It's what our Patrons wanted and as Oracle, I would know.  So thank you."

Another friendly squeeze and Lena's new friend goes back to working the crowd.  

Lena's sobs are interrupted by Sam.

"What's wrong, Lee?"

"Nothing," Lena chokes.

Sam frowns.

"I know you better than that."

"Playroom is ready," Sam grins.  "So I'll know by tomorrow, one way or another."

"We'll see."

Sam shakes her head.

"You never hold out long, Lee," Sam whispers in her ear.  "Not when I'm edging you."

Just like that, all Lena's frantic daydreams reorient.  Now it is Sam and Kara, taking her in turns, pulling her apart, sharing her.  Sam's lips on one tit, Kara's on another. Each of them kissing their way up a thigh before -- Lena hates her brain -- playing rock paper scissors for the right to eat her out and both choosing scissors.

"It's starting," Sam hisses.

Superman is on the right of the stage, two paces back.  

_Clark, Kara wants me to call him Clark._

Lois has a squirming Lara on her lap and the other one, Alura is extremely bored, extremely pouty and extremely six years old.

Wonder Woman stands at the podium.  Her lasso hangs over the side and her sword, intricate and lovely and shining whiter than the sunlight alone would allow, is laid across the seat beside her.  Waiting.

Kara emerges, clad in the robes she wore to the UN.  The angular, stiff, high-collared ones that draw Lena's eyes to the circle of House sigils embroidered on the chest and then, inexorably, up to Kara's neck.  

"Friends!" Wonder Woman calls out.

"We are gathered here to induct a new member.  One who does not need our blessing. One who has lived as a hero since she was thirteen years old.  Kara Zor-El watched her entire world, her entire people, burn. Flung into the pitiless cold of space, she suffered twenty years of torture, drugged and cut by surgical robots.  When she arrived on Earth, it was only the kindness of two women, mother and daughter, that saved her."

"Her adoptive family taught Kara about Earth, about her abilities, about herself.  They kept her safe and taught her what about our Earth was just and kind and good, and what was unjust.  After a life privilege and decades of suffering, she remains kind.”  

Alex is beside Kara, in uniform except for a small iron pendant around her neck.  _A Star of David_ , Lena realizes.  Her _combat_ uniform with the revised exoskeletal frame -- they should have called Lena ages ago -- that sits under the fabric.  

"In her first act on the world stage, Kara reminded us that a hero is not someone who arrests criminals.  A hero is someone who ensures justice. Who corrects wrongs, no matter who committed them. A hero is something _more._ "

"Members of the Justice League, please stand."

Lena's heart skips.

Superman stands.

Batman stands.

Batwoman, Batgirl, Robin, Oracle, Nightwing and half a dozen others stand.

Aquaman, his honor guard, and the Queen of Atlantis stand.

Flash stands.

Green Arrow stands, taking the hand of Black Canary.

Vixen and Hawkgirl stand, with Vixen hurriedly smearing lipstick on the back of her hand.

Zatanna stands.

"Ktharra Zor-El, daughter of Krypton, please stand."

Lena covers her quivering lips.  Sam's arm around her waist is all that's keeping her up.

 _I'm a moron,_ she realizes.  _All those people found love despite their heroing.   They're not afraid to stand with their loved ones on a worldwide broadcast._

"Ktharra Zor-El, do you solemnly swear to defend the defenseless?  To shield the endangered? To nourish the famished? To carry the weak?  To watch the powerful?"

"I do."

"Our lives are dedicated to justice," Wonder Woman intones.  "We shall receive no rewards, hold no titles, enjoy no uncommon privileges.  We are not beyond justice or beyond law."

"We are the caretakers of the garden of life.  We are the spyglass locked on the horizon. We are shield and sword between innocents and the wicked.  In the presence of you, I dedicate myself to this oath. From this breath until my last breath."

"Kara?

"I dedicate myself to this oath," she replies.  "From this breath, until my last breath."

For Lena, the ceremony passes in a daze.  

* * *

 

###  **September 30, 2006 | Alex Danvers**

Metropolis, So'easties Neighborhood on Wentworth Island (AKA Little Sparta) 

Justice League Campus 

The Atlantis Gate 

 

Alex leans over the edge of the railing and watches the water.  Where there should be a few sad fish at the bottom of a dirty urban river, there are gleaming turquoise waters and dense schools of small fish darting to the surface.  On the seabed, a brass-and-steel door is carved into the bedrock, decorated with the Seal of the Oceanmaster. A crimson-skinned octopus crawls along a little sprig of coral that belongs off the coast of Indonesia or Brazil, not the eastern coast of the US.

Just a little bit of magic, leftover by Aquaman and Mera's passing in and out but it's enough to create a sliver of paradise that goes from the docks downriver and carries past the harbor to the horizon.  Something to spice up Alex's view of the chicken-slaughtering plant on the other bank of the river.

"Vegan it is," Alex mutters, waving her hand to thin out the smell.

"Hey, soldier," Maggie purrs from behind her, "Looking for a good time?"

Alex chuckles.

"Hey, you."

Maggie bumps her hip against Alex's and leans next to her.

"Hey yourself, Danvers."

Alex shivers.

"Cold?"

"No," Alex sighs.

She hadn't realized it at first but Maggie's rubbing her hands over Alex's.

'What's up, wifey-to-be?"

Alex hands Maggie the folder.

"You didn't see that.  It's code-word intel, classified Whisky-Yankee."

"Meaning…"

"White House personnel only and if it leaks, someone dies."

"Oh.  Why am I not seeing it then?"

"Open the folder.  Third photo."

Maggie flips through the photos.

"Jesus!"

She drops the packet in surprise, leaving national security files bobbing in a river in the most heavily-populated city in America.

"Smooth, lady killer," Alex teases.

She draws her sidearm and trains it on the papers. She fires three shots, boiling off huge clouds of steam and incinerating each clump.

"That…" Maggie stammers.  "That's your dad, right?"

"Yeah.  He looks about the same, too."

Alex holsters her weapon and runs her fingers through her hair.

"That was pulled from security footage of what we think is a CIA black site.  Utterly destroyed by private mercs. They left one server. One which had that on it, along with enough evidence to get the outgoing Director of the CIA and Secretary of Defense put in front of the World Court."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

"Those must have been some mercs."

Alex nods.

"We recovered a body.  Man named Slade Wilson.  Interpol red alert, FBI most wanted, CIA and KGB paper trails longer than this island.  It wasn't the guards who killed him, either."

"Who then?"

"League of Assassins.  One arrow to the neck. Poisoned with snake venom.  The arrow was fletched with bluejay feathers."

Maggie whistles.

"Nyssa Al-Ghul, huh?  She's not cheap and that's not counting in hiring the small army.  Who could even afford that?"

Alex looks over her shoulder towards the crowd.

"Lena Luthor could."

Maggie bumps her hip into Alex's again.

"So, go ask her."

"What?" Alex squawks.

"Ask her.  If you think this was a coincidence, Alex, I'm calling bullshit.  A couple weeks after Lena mentions she thinks your dad's alive, a bunch of hired goons bust up a lab and he escapes?  The worst hired killer in the world ends up dead at the hands of the queen of a worldwide cult? Why? Whoever can hire Deathstroke could afford to pay him and no one is stupid enough to stiff him."

"Someone wanted your dad sprung.  The payer felt guilty killing so they made sure that someone very bad died.   Stupid plan but really well done.  Whole mess could have been avoided by asking for help.  Classic Lena."

[Alex, I need your attention!]

[What is it, Echo?]

[I have detected another radio broadcasting using the ex-CIA cipher we encountered at Offutt.  Four o'clock, hundred yards.]

Alex turns.  A dark-haired man is standing at the campus's fenceline, wearing a grimy bubble coat and leaning on the wrought iron railing.  Two plain-clothes Amazon guards are chatting at a nearby bench. Gently reminding him why the neighborhood is called "Little Sparta".

[The bum?]

[Sending a ghost image to your retinas now, Alex.]

"Dad?" Alex whispers.

[Tell Kara!  Call Eliza!]

Alex takes off at a sprint.  One of the Amazons gets up to intercept her but she ducks behind a tree, grabbing the bark and slinging herself around it to keep momentum.  

She hits the fence hard enough to knock the wind out of herself.

[Alex, be careful.  He has been through numerous augmentation surgeries.  Crude ones. The transmitter is inside his cranium.]

"Do you know who I am?"

He smiles.

"Yeah, I do.  To think," he laughs.  "I used to call you princess when you were little."

Kara's arrival is so fast it vaporizes a stretch of fence.

"Jeremiah?" she whispers.

"Hey, kid.  Doing well for yourself, I see.  What's a guy need to do to get invited to his daughter's party, huh?"

"Hey," Kara mumbles.

"How's your mom?"

Alex swallows.

_He has no idea about mom's cancer._

Maggie jogs up and grabs Alex's hand.

"You…" Maggie huffs.  "Danvers...girls...need to...work out...less!"

He holds his hand out to Maggie.

"Jeremiah Danvers."

She takes it.

"I'm Maggie Sawyer.  This," she nods towards Alex.  "Is my fiancee."

"Oh."

"Yeah," Alex huffs, her face hot and tingling.  "Oh."

_What do I even say?  Hey, sorry you missed me joining the army, coming out, falling in love and getting engaged?  Sorry you missed Kara saving the world, like six times?_

All over the city, air raid sirens go off.  A blast of energy pierces the messy gray clouds and strikes the chicken processing plant.  Kara turns to look, lifts her arm and balls her fist.  Her skin releases a scarlet lance of pure heat into the clouds.  A wedge-shaped craft drops below the clouds, its fuel tanks ruptured and its engines consumed by a runaway plasma fire.  It plunges into the river.

"Kara!" Alex hollers.  "What the actual fuck!"

"Bounty hunters," Kara replies.  "Thousands of ships, using EMP and implosion missiles.  Dropped out in low orbit and unloaded everything they were carrying in one salvo..  Planetary barrier overloaded eating up the radiation flash.  They've already disabled the _Memory of Krypton_  and half of the orbital turrets.  I'm retasking everything I have left to clear the skies."

[Echo, get me everyone and copy JSOC and POTUS.]

"This is White Knight.  We have alien ships entering the atmosphere in force.  Stand by for target marking.  Receive, confirm and fire at will.  Prepare for defense plan Marne River.  Remind them that is our planet."

"Kara, I need a lift."

"Kolex, on my signal, transmat Alex directly to the front gates of Anvil Base.  Broadcast the Worldkiller rally signal, centered on myself.  Activate all Momento Mori cells and notify any militia and rebel groups I’ve worked with.  Load the medical robots on the transmat pads.  Have the Sancturary AI deploy them to civilian casualty areas as needed.”  

Kara exhales.

"Really, really sorry your planet is getting invaded, Maggie.  Uh, you too dad."

He laughs.

"Well, I’ll take the damage it out of your allowance.  Up, up and away?"

Kara's eyes turn red.

"Something like that."

She grabs her phone and flicks through her contacts.

"Sam!" Kara hollers as soon as it picks up.  "Take Lena home."

"She has already relocated herself, Regent."

"Fuck," Kara hisses.  "Sovereign already took over."

"Ready to get to work, Alex?"

"Do it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR’S NOTE #4:  
> The Battle of the Marne in WWI happened early and led to the trench warfare. French troops had been pushed back to the Marne River just outside Paris. Realizing how close the Germans were to their capital, they held at the river and then pushed back, stopping the Germans. That’s why Alex uses it as a codename for the plan used when the aliens are already way too close. Most human military forces would know of the battle and have a rough idea of the codename's meaning, but aliens would not unless they'd studied Earth history in detail.


	44. CODEX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE:
> 
> This is sort of a background material / worldbuilding chapter which I will pin in place here at the end. It will be presented as in-universe information, written as college lectures which our heroines might have attended, excerpts from fiction and non-fiction books, transcripts and poems.

 

#  **FOR YOUR EYES ONLY: Field Handbook for DEO Operatives**

* * *

 

****

##  **COMMUNICATIONS, SECTION 12C**

 

* * *

 **Abbreviations used in** **DEO** C **ommunications**

CIA = Central Intelligence Agency  
(United States' main agency for overseas espionage, including both intelligence gathering and field operations, including covert military action)  
  
DARPA = Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency  
(Long-range, high tech or long-shot military projects)

FBI = Federal Bureau of Investigation  
(Highest law-enforcement agency at the federal level)

NSA = National Security Agency   
(Highly secretive organization which specializes in signal intelligence and data collection)

POTUS = President of the United States  
(IN UNIVERSE TIMELINE--From 2002-2006, George W. Bush, from 2006-2016, Barack H. Obama, from 2016-? Donald J. Trump)

RoE = Rules of Engagement  
(Rules by which military personnel are expected to behave in the field with regards to civilians, enemy forces, PoWs, etc.)

SCIF = Secured Compartmenatlized Information Facility  
(A facililty prepared and monitored to eliminate risk of bugging or eavesdropping, example:  White House Situation Room)

 

* * *

   
**DEO Codenames**

Blacksmith = Gen. Shay Mitchell, US Army, commander of the DEO and "Anvil Base".

Bleeder = Michael "Lucky" MacAllister, US Marine Corps (ret.) DEO researcher and quartermaster, in charge of weapons design, maintenance, and tracking.

Headphones = (Identity Redacted), DEO intelligence officer in charge of wiretapping, espionage, covert training, improvised combat and monitoring for the possibility of a DEO reveal.

Paperclip = Joan "Jet" Rockwell, former naval aviator, DEO air controller, test pilot and in charge of purchasing, developing and provisioning of DEO aircraft in coordination with defense contractors.  If the DEO ever gets access to space-worthy combat vessels, she will fill this role as well.

Tailor = (Identity Redacted) DEO armorer in charge of body armor, exoskeletons and protective gear.

Vigilante = FBI Agent Cameron Chase, (secret) wife Gen Mitchell and an FBI contact.  So named because their relationship is secret, making her a vigilante justice.

White Knight = Lt. Alex Danvers, US Army, commander of DEO-1 (team is nicknamed "Snowstorm" following their first mission in North Dakota) and most experienced field team commander.

 

* * *

  
**DEO-1 Members:**

Alex Danvers (DEO-1-1 "White Knight")

Susan Vasquez (DEO-1-2 "Straightjacket" ) 

Mike Reynolds (DEO-1-3 "Gentleman")

Pham Demos (DEO-1-4 "Ice")

 

* * *

 

**Titles used in DEO communications:**

AttnGen = Attorney General of the United States  
  
IntelDIr = National Intelligence Director  
  
DirFBI = Director of the FBI  
  
SecDef = Secretary of Defense  
  
ChiefStaffArmy / ChiefStaffAirForce / ChiefNavOff / CmdtMarineCorps =

  * Chief of Staff in the US Army
  * Chief of Staff in the US Air Force
  * Chief Naval Officer in the US Navy
  * Commandant of the Marine Corps in the US Marine Corps



 

* * *

 

#  **Kryptowiki:  Mechanic’s Handbook**

* * *

 

Ktharra Zor-El (known as Kara Zor-El or Superwoman)--Head of House El, acting counselor of the Kryptonian Republic and lady regent of the Kryptonian Imperial Protectorate--uses a customized system of Kryptonian technology as armor and weapons.  

 

**“Scion” Battlesuit**

A vacuum sealed and fully spaceworthy suit of powered promethium armor with a sixteen-particle thick layer of neutron matter split into four layers to encase a layer of negative energy, negative mass material with a series of ‘vents’ etched into them.  A unique innovation is this exotic matter/physical armor system.  When excited by white sand, the negative layer emits a pair of continual warp field facing outward and operating at slightly different frequencies.  The feedback between the fields creates a high-intensity distortion in space curvature that provides protection similar to a military grade barrier field generator but at much lower power draw.

Without occupant Scion is capable of point eight five percent lightspeed in normal space and ten light year jumps made at sixteen hundred lightspeed.  With Kara Zor-El on board, the propulsion system’s potential is unlocked by leveraging her Destroyer implants to boost performance and her metabolism and quantum entanglement anatomy to reinforce the structure and dissipate heat and physical insults.

Like many Kryptonian-issued military suits, it can operate in ‘react-only’ mode where the onboard computer focuses on mimicry of Kara Zor-El’s movements and matches its heat and energy venting and output to match hers.  This removes any complications in making split-second decisions that might arise from the onboard intelligence offering suggestions.

The concept was derived several of the Kryptonian Republican Navy designs for heavy infantry use in interstellar and interplanetary flight.  

  * The countermeasures, adaptive camouflage coating and sensor suite were pulled from “Crystal”-class stealth suit for one or two-soldier recon units.  
  * The propulsion and maneuvering system were adapted from the “Lancer”-class suits for patrol duty and intercepting light enemy spacecraft.  
  * The overall frame, power core, power transfer and armor composite is from archival designs of the “Glory”-class assault suits that were used in the Kryptonian Imperial Guard.  No other designs for Destroyers remained extant in a usable form.



Due to both personal preferences and the lack of a stable supply of white sand in the Sol system, Scion’s does not use the original suit’s weapon channels or mounts.  This allows Kara Zor-El to conserve chassis space and energy draw for other purposes. While a defanged design like this would be impractical for any non-weaponized Kryptonian, it is more adaptable, needs less resupply and has fewer subsystems for maintenance and is thus excellently suited for a Destroyer working alone.  

Strategically, defanging removes concerns about ammunition, barrel checks and missile computers.  

Tactically, defanging allows for flexibility and the element of surprise as the suit’s true capabilities are masked by a civilian appearance.  

The tremendous speed and force with which a Destroyer can move compensates for the lack of cannons, missiles or beam weapons.  Her training in Klukor, Shavo-Tahiko and Juru’Tah martial arts both with and without blades were at the tutelage of her aunt, Republican General Astra Ina-Zenn.   This makes her a technically proficient opponent despite her lack of combat experience.

 

**“Flamebird” Sword**

A custom-designed sword styled after the distinctive broad-tipped blade of Sholah Ina-Zod, the legendary “butcher’s queen” of ancient Krypton.

While most deep-space operations would make a sword beyond impractical, the speed with which a Destroyer can close in combined with Flamebird’s sheer potential kinetic energy, adjustable mass and atomic-scale cutting edge viable against a starship hull.  

The blade itself consists of a mechanical layer wrapped in a promethium and neutron matter composite with barrier field generators sunk into the upper layers.  Warp field generators are used to negate most of the weapons mass and to increase its maneuverability in any gravity. A redundant system of paired synthetic micro-singularities vibrating at opposing frequencies powers the weapon as noble gases such as nitrogen are fed into them and annihilated in order to capture the energy.

Rather than using an cutting edge in the traditional sense, Flamebird leverages a network of barrier fields similar to a warship’s defense shields.  The fields bleed over each other, causing immense interference which strengthens the blade from outside impact but also necessitates the unusual power cores.  

At the thinnest edge, the fields narrow to a width comparable to the electron shell of a helium-three atom and has a field integrity similar to a _Heritage of Rao_ dreadnought.

Due to the large quantity of neutron star matter involved -- nearly twenty cubic micrometers -- Flamebird weighs approximately forty metric tons with the warp field generators _engaged_ and would weigh vastly more -- five million metric tons -- in the unlikely event that all the field generators failed.

No human built technology exists that can move that amount of mass, which exceeds all the nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines in the US Navy.  If it is not in contact with Zor-El’s biometrics, Flamebird uses its immense mass and the adjustability the warp fields offer to shelter in place. If it is in lockdown, only a weaponized Kryptonian or a capital ship’s engines could possibly move it.

 

**“Kolex” & “Kleenex”:**

Kolex was originally an artificial intelligence (Quantum Array/Tier 5) in an elaborate chassis of the traditional four-armed ‘Kandori school’ design given to the House of El centuries before the Bottling of Kandor.  The chassis is one point five meters long with a two meter reach on the arms. Rather than traversing a surface, it uses low-temperature plasma jets to suspend itself in mid air.

Used by both Zor-El and his daughter for research purposes, the chassis was used more and more by Kara as her father’s work steered more into classified military projects requiring non-intelligent hardware assistants.

By the time of Krypton’s destruction he was Kara Zor-El’s most constant companion, primary academic tutor and bodyguard, narrowly surpassing even Alura El in time spent with her.

His compute core was separated in the moments leading up to Krypton’s destruction and transmitted with Kara in her pod.  The largest three processors out of twenty total were then added to an implant in Kara Zor-El’s body.

A replacement chassis was later constructed by Kara Zor-El and Alex Danvers and a replenished compute core installed within.

 

Kleenex is of an identical design but scaled up to three meters long and four and a half meter reach with added sensors and electric non-lethal weapons.

 

**“Koncave” & “Konvex”:**

Large construction drones modified from the design used in maintenance of the fuel processors in orbit over Argo City, the second largest continually operated industrial machines in space.

Like Kolex, they use a four-armed design around a chassis that is suspended on low temperature lift-jets but due to the nature of their work, they can also move without lift jets on a set of six articulated legs.  Each stands ten meters tall by twenty five meter’s reach and carries a ten-drone swarm of smaller drones for rapid repair or small-spaces work.

Used primarily for disaster recovery and damage control to rapidly counteract the damage caused to civilian infrastructure.  Unarmed but equipped with powerful barrier fields to allow work in debris fields, extreme heat or toxic environments.

 

* * *

 

 

 

* * *

# COURSEWORK FOR A MAJOR IN ALIEN STUDIES IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SYSTEM

 

  * XENO 101 & 102 - CUSTOMS AND ETIQUETTE 
  * XENO 103 - ALIEN BIOLOGIES AND CULTURES
  * XENO 104 - CORE TECHNOLOGICAL CONCEPTS
  * XENO 105 - CHALLENGES IN ACCLIMATION, HUMAN / ALIEN RELATIONS, AND POLITICS



* * *

 

##  **XENO 103:  ALIEN BIOLOGIES AND CULTURES:**

###  _Lecture #1 - Galactic History in less than 500 words_

### Dr. Tanka Vrox-Queryl, University of California San Diego, on academic exchange from Coluan Discovery Institute.

 

The history of this galaxy can be described in two ways:  the military struggle between Kryptonian and Daxamite nation-states and their respective views of the universe and the struggle between the Krypton/Daxam axis and other species for overall supremacy.   These approaches are actually complimentary.  
  
Were we to view Krypton as the golden ideal, rich in technology and scientifically unmatched but embarrassed by its unruly and grasping colony at Daxam, we would ignore the short lived but extremely brutal Kryptonian Imperium and all its horrors.  We would ignore the true inequality between members of great houses and poor Kryptonians or the caste system that arose post-Imperium between the homeworld and emigres who they dismissed as sub-Kryptonian both socially and at times, in legal standing.

Were we to view Daxam as a state of pragmatists seeking to harness their power to evolve the universe to their ends, we would ignore the fact that Daxamite alliances have never held for longer than two hundred standard years.  We would ignore the fact that no race has ever gone without at least one member being taken as a slave by a Daxamite. We would ignore the fact that at three different points in time, all races and powers except for the neutral Coluan Continuity have fought in alliances or alliances of convenience against Daxamite expansion.

  
Were we to treat Daxam and Krypton and by extension the Rao system as the focal point of explored space, we would be ignoring the engine of the entire conflict:  Krypton and Daxam’s struggle for new technology, new markets and new allies beyond their own borders. The Krypton-Daxam struggle was fought between Krypton and Daxam and their respective allies but it was always triggered by access to _other races_ , whether for raw resources, client states and citizens, enforcing legal codes as seen by one power or the other, economic wealth, or acquiring technology.

What the galaxy will look like in the next hundred thousand years with both Krypton and Daxam destroyed by a supernova is the only topic worthy of debate among galactic historians.

 

* * *

###  _Lecture #2 -_ _Rakni-Xinda_ _,_

### Dr. Tanka Vrox-Queryl, University of California San Diego on academic exchange from Coluan Discovery Institute.

**Evolution:**

The **Rakni-Xinda** are a two-race civilization from Rak Prime, a planet covered in jungles, swamps and inland seas. The Raks--the hosts--were once a small, bipedal ambush predator with four tool-making arms. They relied on tools, excellent senses, speed and pack tactics to survive despite dozens of massive predators in their jungle habitat. The **Xin** \--the symbionts--are snake like amphibians with high intelligence but owing to abundant food in a predator-free environment of a caustic inland sea, they did not develop toolmaking limbs or vocal cords, communicating with sound, light-signaling and later touch telepathy.

Both species were sentient but stuck: without the Xin's ability to rapidly heal severe wounds and process the worst toxins and venoms, the Raks were limited to their forested mountains. Without a more complex body shape, the Xins could dominate their native seas and sing their songs to each other from generation to generation but not create shelter or labor-saving devices. The fusion of the two species greatly benefited both.  Once the Xin swarms were given hands to express their shared minds with and once Raks were immune to their predators' bites, they spread over Rak like wildfire, eliminating nearly all other large predators.

 

**Culture and Identity:**

The fusion occurred several million years ago. The fused species refers to themselves as **Rakni-Xinda** , referencing the words for ‘body’ (‘nykn” in Rak) and ‘family’ (“daah”, a non-verbal call Xin used to find young in the water) and adding to the names of each race to denote their shared identity.  The voluntary and deliberate creation of a new sentient lifeform is an event that has no parallel in galactic history.

A modern 'raxxie' [slang term, probably Thessalian origin, affectionate] is a creature unlike any other: one being composed of dozens of mature Xinda wrapped around a Rakni 'host' of the same gender.   It is now nearly unheard of to encounter either in a non-paired form except by extreme deprivation or sudden death of one side of the symbiosis. Widely seen as tragic cases, such individuals are offered medical care, therapy and symbiotic reunion by the central government.

 

**Technology:**

No matter their species, by virtue of having to learn the local’s extremely complex biology, doctors trained on Rak Prime are among the most sought after in known space.  Rakni-Xinda engineers can often grow something that others would need a crane, a welding torch and an engine for. They make extensive use of a single-celled life form affectionately known as 'the sludge' which they have engineered from the ground up, manufacturing it by the cubic kilometer in grow pools. They use the malleable creatures to breed beasts of burden, rapidly fill in building frames and exude material for clothing. Some of their larger starship frames are made using the age-old technique of a scaffold of using metal-tainted sludge colonies cooked at high heat to destroy the organic matter.

 

**Morphology:**

A male Rakni-Xinda stands approximately two meters tall and presents as a four armed biped with dark green, gray, yellow or red skin.  Each arm ends in four fingers and a thumb and the fingers are longer, wider and thicker than a human, Kryptonian or Thessalian finger. They possess three rows of small conical teeth and manipulate their food between them with a prehensile tongue.  Reproductive organs approximate Kryptonian or human forms, albeit with different tissue types. Genetic material from the Rak and Xin are mingled in the ejaculate.

Females stand approximately one and three quarters meters tall and are similar except for additional fatty tissue in the torso and hips and additional muscle groups there and in the lower back.  These replicate the more curved shape and ‘breasts’ of the Kryptonian and the Thessalian are believed to be deliberate genetic changes to better attract those mates. Ancient artwork depicts female Rakni-Xinda without these features.  Reproductive organs approximate Kryptonian or human forms. Embryos of both Rak and Xin are contained in the birthing organs although only one Rak embryo is released for every thirty Xin. Offspring are born symbiotic and twins, triplets and so on are more common than in humans and always genetically identical.  Large broods of identicals, particularly females, are ascribed positive religious connotations.

They lack flight or gravity manipulation or super-strength.  As apex predators with millennia of genetic enhancements, their movement speed is within the lower edge of the Kryptonian population’s range.  They are immune to naturally occurring venoms and the vast majority of diseases. The symbiont scales are insect-like and very durable for their weight and the outer membrane the Xinda and Rakni share is heavily reinforced with symbiont chitin and chitin-sheathed smooth muscles.  Because the body and all its organs are shared, the load of healing an injury can be divided among the Xin as they slide past each other and the symbiotic form can recover in minutes, hours or days from debilitating injuries so long as sufficient calories can be found. The combined sensory and cognitive abilities of dozens of intelligent beings makes them incredibly difficult to surprise.

**History:**

Rakni-Xinda entered their spaceflight period more recently than other major races, roughly sixty thousand years ago, and the Thessalians encountered them fifty-two thousand years ago, quickly forming a tight economic alliance based on exotic animals and foods, consumer entertainment, medical  and bioengineering technology. Rakni-Xinda served informally in the first Krypton-Daxam Wars on behalf of their Thessalian allies with whom intermarriage was by then very common. They were neutral in the second and third Krypton-Daxam War. They were conquered by Krytpon within the first two years of the imperial period although their lack of armed rebellion meant that while taxed and patrolled, they fared better than White Martians who were nigh-extinct after their insurrections.  

* * *

 

###  _Lecture #3 - Thessalians_

### Dr. Tanka Vrox-Queryl, University of California San Diego on academic exchange from Coluan Discovery Institute.

**Evolution, Reproduction and Culture in the Early Period:**

The **Thessalians** are an asexual, female-presenting species from Armali ("Womb" in pre-first-contact Thessalian).  Because most now will accept being addressed as ‘she’ after meeting females of other intelligent races, the term will be used here despite its inaccuracy.  

 

**Morphology and Appearance:**

Morphologically speaking, they are visually most similar to a human or Kryptonian female.  The distinctions are a blue, purple or white skin tone with narrow stripes or spots, no body hair, a layer of scales layered under the translucent outer layers of skin and a series of fleshy protrusions of brain tissue on the top and back of the head which extends outside their craniums in thickly-scaled protrusions typically five centimeters in diameter at the tip and ten at the base.  

This tissue has the advantage of being more exposed than that inside the braincase and is incredibly sensitive to changes in nearby gravity and as such aids in their control of their gravity related abilities.  While the human-originated term ‘hair tentacles’ is considered a slur, ‘crown’ or ‘crest’ is not. Small areas of exposed nerve membrane exist between the crests and larger areas under them. Though the crests are stiff, they are not fixed in place and a sufficiently skilled sexual partner can relax their partner and massage these, which are solid nerve tissue and as such by far the single most potent erogenous zone.  Due to the fact that one side of this highly pleasurable but tame-looking organ is exposed in most is not all clothing fashions, a playful slang has arisen among Thessalians and their sexual partners, especially around the term crown. [examples: “only a queen could carry that crown” or “coronation” or “helmeted” as slang for virginity and denying consent.].

Males and some females of many species find Thessalians physically attractive.  While personal tastes do vary, their default biological sexual attraction is gender agnostic as their evolutionary history never created a need to distinguish among potential mates by any metric other than attraction and compatibility.   

Some modern Thessalians choose to take full advantage of this, honing their skills in conversation, socializing, relationships and sexual activity over thousands of years with multiple races and often on multiple planets.  Despite less than half a percent of the population, these extreme outliers -- with hundreds or thousands of past paramours and perhaps dozens of life-long relationships with shorter lived species -- have given the race a contradictory reputation as both unthinking sex addicts and unrealistically perfect romantic partners, a reputation which often precedes the actual immigrants themselves.

 

 **E** **volution, Family Structure and Culture in the Early Period:**

Untangling their evolutionary history, anatomy, family structure and modern culture is difficult.  Much of their modern culture traces a straight line back to their earliest history, their home planet and biological adaptations that predate their sentience.  

Armali is now covered by oceans for more than ninety percent of its surface though there is strong indications that is a situation which changed in the last billion years.

Thessalians evolved from air breathers which preyed on fish on the bottom of the northern oceans and nested in the warm shallows as such can survive several hours on a deep breath through intense changes in pressure and changes in heat. Their bodies reflexively seal up when denied oxygen and heat, enabling them to 'hold their breath' in human parlance whether in deep water or vacuum without injury. They arose from groups of multiple adults who mated, birthed and reared together and remain a very affectionate, tactile race with a need for platonic or romantic touch that borders on addictive behavior.

The binary star it orbits is composed of a white dwarf and yellow star close together, meaning that day and night change quickly and are a two-stage cycle.  The day of the yellow star Tariil (“The Guide” in a now-dead dialect) is longer-lasting but dimmer, especially in the depths. The short, bright day that occurs when the the white Aryene (“Blessing” in same) passes in front of the yellow is infrequent, very bright and only five hours long, penetrating even the deepest trenches to some degree.  This offered a feast for shallow to mid-depth predators like the ancestors of Thessalians when the slower moving creatures on the ocean floor were exposed and defenseless.

Archaeological digs have discovered that at least three advanced civilizations have inhabited Armali before the Thessalians and the last one died out in a starship battle that ended in orbital bombardment with comets and asteroids.  This flooded all but the highest landmasses with melted comet ice and polluted the ocean floor with thousands of wrecks and tens of thousands of still-fueled starship drive cores leeching highly energized synthetic isotopes of so called ‘white sand’ into the water.  

Many deep-dwelling species on Armali can process starship fuel and those with bio-luminescence, like Thessalians, sometimes evolved electrical organs to metabolize and excite its gravity manipulating properties, which can affect gravity and space curvature intensely at short distances in a matter similar to a ship-scale warp drive.  With practice, an adult Thessalian can generate and use micro-singularities -- short lived black holes -- to negate or reverse planetary gravity around her own body, divert moving objects in a different direction, bend or consume light and radio signals. With technological aids such as special alloys, she can manipulate at a distance any tools and weapons primed to react to gravity wave interference.  

With their resistance to the neutron burn and other ill effects of white sand contamination comes a lack of aging: any other insults their cells could suffer are less intense than those of raw starship fuel in their veins. This has also led them to develop low fertility rates and over the eons prior to sentience and they fell into parthenogenesis reproduction with only branching errors changing their genetic makeup. The mother's body can protect the embryo inside it from the sand’s particle bombardment, so long as no part of the process takes place outside the womb and no genetic material is exposed.

When not on the homeworld, the Thessalian must ingest white sand regularly or go into a fever-like state of withdrawal and face eventual atrophy of the specialized organs.  
  
**NOTE #1:**

Recorded instances of Rakni-Xinda males and Thessalians engaging in sexual reproduction exist and are attributed to the extremely resilient genetics and aggressive zygotes of Rakni-Xinda and their parasitic nature.  It is unknown if it is genetic contaminating or simply the surviving larvals implanting in the Thessalian embryo before birth. Research on that topic is extensive but held as a state secret on Armali at the request of the Thessalian and Rakni-Xinda governments.

 

**History, Early Period:**

Due to not having a concept of gender or holding land as property while on their mostly-ocean world, they went into space without having developed terms like "Men" or "Russian" to differentiate themselves from those who were "Women" or "French".  This remains confusing to many humans they interact with.

After going unseen for centuries after leaving their remote homeworld, a Thessalian scout ship was captured by a Daxamite patrol roughly a hundred thousand years ago.  Lacking the tools to understand gender let alone or landholding nobles who held rank by virtue of being males, they were considered primitives and sentenced to become pleasure slaves.

The debacle that was first contact ended with a flourish.  Having previously decoded Daxamite religious texts from a wreck, the captain claimed she was Thessal--a feared witch who in the epic poem “Labors of Daxam-Ur” could move the moon without moving herself--and gave a surprise demonstration in which she tore open a enriched promethean bulkhead in front of the Daxamite ship's commander.  She and her crew were pardoned and released with apologies of the crown a fact which remains a source of mirth to many, especially Kryptonians eager to mock their former colony.

The term Thessalians has stuck ever since and is seemingly preferred as it keeps outsiders one word farther away from their cherished home which most adult emigres revisit during their lives.

Kryptonian anthropologists encountered the Thessalians separately at roughly the same time, albeit more peaceably and on Armali itself.  Krypton soon took them in as a client state, leading to the first Daxam-Krypton war after Daxamite slavers attempted to enter orbit around Armali.

Following this incident and the discovery of hostile and non-hostile aliens, Thessalian scientists began research into military applications of their innate abilities.  By the second Krypton-Daxam war, trained Thessalians with a diet rich in white sand and cybernetic amplifiers had been recorded flying at will without thrust, priming hundred-meter-wide singularities in combat, pulling enemy craft out of atmospheric flight and defeating enemy combatants wearing neutron-matter enriched armor.  None of these would be possible for a living creature (or a machine) without the aid of a black hole.

 

**Politics, Modern Period:**

Thessalians have been a client race to the Kryptonians since their discovery of one another, preferring them over their Daxamite kin.  They have never been in military conflict with Krypton and have fought in every war alongside Kryptonians with the exception of their disarmament during the imperial period.  While the cynical -- and academically popular -- view of their vassalhood during the imperial period is that Thessalians calculated their odds and chose to surrender, it is equally likely that they saw this as a change, not a break, in a long alliance.  Some writings at the time support this as does the Thessalian teaching _"Kneeling before power proves your bravery and trust in others.  Being thrown down on your knees proves only your pride and anger."_  Though most often invoked to chastise young regarding their elders, it provides an alternative reasoning why some in the Armali Senate might have voted to accept the vassalhood.

 

**Technology:**

Because of their tolerance for airless, cold environments and the ability to affect gravity with their bodies, Thessalians are the only other species besides Kryptonians that can move and operate unsuited for long periods in vacuum without injury although they need air every few hours.  Their vacuum survivability is exceeded only by Kryptonians in a non-red-star system or special purpose military life forms such as androids or Worldkillers.

They often lavish great care on their starships whether public or personally owned, polishing, tuning and maintaining them by hand regardless of the lack of a dry-dock.

The phrase 'love her ship and she'll love you' is a common one in disreputable drinking establishments in the Milky Way and now even in the systems of the Andromedan Reach where the Glorious Ascendancy has decreed only Thessalians, artificials and synthetically evolved lifeforms welcome as immigrants.

 

* * *

 

### Reading #1 -

from “ _History of a Most Terrible and Playful War: The story of the Daxamite Imperial Guard and the Thessalian Zealotry during the War of Bodies_ ” by Vicki Vale for Terra Incognito Publishing House, New York City.

 

**Shortly after the skirmishes over Davarr Prime during the Kyrpton-Thessalian joint campaign against Daxam's second attempt to conquer Armali (Earth years:  12,432 BC and 143,218 After Galactic Era), a Daxamite sub-commander was tried for treason after surrendering to an overwhelming Thessalian force which arrived to support passing Kryptonian patrols before Daxamite landing parties could transport slaves.**

**What follows is his account of the the arrival of the Thessalian flagship, a fast-dreadnought called Syame Vass ("Golden Sister") at his trial:**

 

 

 

 

 

> "We thought we had them on the run.  Kryptonians were leaving once the numbers got bad, like always.  The civilian population of the planet was being corralled. I was getting take-off requests from the shuttles when then the Bitch came from behind us.  Jumped straight through the gas giant. Three times the size of any of ours. Painted gold and red, blinding our gunners with the reflection. The Bitch’s prow went through our hulls like a knife.
> 
> When I saw that thing's main gun charging before it fired on my Admiral's ship, I knew they weren't like us.  When it turned to face my ship, I had decided the war was long since over.
> 
> There was no fighting these people.  Not if _that_ was their weapon.  Not if sending _that_ was their way of rescuing a third-rate colony.
> 
> It wasn't gray, with some flag scribbled here like the raxxies or all blue and shiny, without a drop of paint like the Kryptonians prefer. It wasn't royal white with the Emperor's personal herald on the bridge.
> 
> The whole gods-be-damned hull was hand painted, flowers and prayer blocks and those poems they chant at us over the comms. We could tell that by the telescopes. Tens of thousands of square _itash_ to paint and someone had treated every part of that ship like a lover. I realized that someone would repaint it again after it destroyed my ship. Someone would be caressing the pits in the plating before they filled them in.  Someone would crawl inside the cannon and stroke their hands along the barrel to check it. Would they praise the cannon for my death? Tell her how quick and strong she was? Would they stroke the armor and tell her how brave she was?  Tell her to be brave one more time so they could bind her wounds?
> 
> It wasn’t their _ship_ , that monster was their _child_.
> 
> They do not think as we do, my emperor.  I have taken enough of them to my cabin at gunpoint and still snarling, gnashing and clawing to know that.  They live for their families and in their mind, their families are their bodies and their bodies are -- may ladies of this court pardon me -- works of art.  
> 
> So why would their flagship be different?  Why would something they treated as art not be a living body?  Why would a living body not be family?
> 
> So if by some miracle we destroyed it -- just my ship and three cruisers with dead engines -- how many mothers would that ship have? Ten thousand?  A hundred thousand? It was clear that her makers had showered the Bitch with care every day since her keel was laid.
> 
> So, yes. I ordered surrender. Shoot me for it tomorrow if you like.
> 
> I saved my men!
> 
> I saved them from a hundred thousand screaming bitches, hunting them down one by one, clawing their eyes out and ripping them open with their teeth because I ordered them to fire on the Bitch. To destroy that which they loved like a daughter!  
> 
> My emperor, I am a soldier.  So I know death when I see it and I have seen it coming at me with a white dwarf smiling on it, a black hole in its teeth and fucking love poems painted on it!  My life is a small price to pay to save my crew from that madness."

**He was executed the next day at dawn for treason in ordering the surrender and theft against the crown for abandoning the slave merchants but most of his crew survived the war.  A bust of the commander with a plaque celebrating the passion of his testimony is installed in the honor hall on Armali at the High Command Shipyards where the Syame Vass is still stationed.**

**[AUTHOR’S PERSONAL NOTE:  The all-Thessalian singularity-percussion punk group “Death and Fucking Love Poems” recently released their four hundred nineteenth studio album “Bleeding Hearts and Broken Stars” and celebrated twelve hundred years together with a ninety-planet tour.  I confess that it is surprisingly good mood music! - Affectionately, VV]**

 

* * *

 

## XENO 104 - CORE TECHNOLOGICAL CONCEPTS

###  **_Lecture #1 -_** **_Energy Generation and Containment Technology and its Relation to “Warp” Spaceflight._**

### Dr. Aisling O’Shea, University of California Los Angeles, on academic exchange from Oxford University

**Summary:**

The generation, capture, and utilization of immense amounts of energy is the cornerstone of any activity undertaken in space and this increases by orders of magnitude as the area of operations expands.  Advanced chemistry is needed for rockets capable of reaching orbit. The use of nuclear fusion is needed to move any significant manned craft between planets. Energy sources like compressed radioisotope fuel are needed for meaningful use of slower-than-light craft between systems.  Exotic types of matter, completely unlike any naturally occurring atoms and compounds, are needed for routine faster than light travel.

**The Galactic Fuel Economy:**

The economic and technological underpinnings of fuel generation all rest on super-compressed uranium and plutonium crystals, commonly known as white sand.  Such fuel is used in the ships that mine fuel, minerals and energy and used in the machinery that generates more exotic states of energy and matter.

The economy of an interstellar civilization can be started without compressed isotopes--as it is in remote colonies--but it cannot be sustained without them.

**Compressed Radioisotopes (e.g. White Sand) - Creation:**

These crystals are created by using space-warping fields similar to the ones used in starship travel as a compressing force similar to a hammer.  Over the course of repeated strikes, the isotope is compressed into a lattice of closely-spaced atoms that allow anything from five to even a hundred times the usual density per cubic centimeter.  The final and most powerful strike causes the outermost layer to transform into a layer of solid neutrons several particles thick. This encases the otherwise dangerous fuel in a layer of material similar to a neutron star.  No physical substance exists that is more durable.

The pellets are invariably spherical.  The size of the compression fields and quantity of material allow the creation of isotope pellets ranging from roughly two centimeters to six meters.

**Compressed Radioisotopes (e.g. White Sand) - Energy Capture:**

When in use, an excitation beam strikes the compressed isotope and gradually disintegrates the neutron shell, allowing the material to reach critical mass and creating a pinpoint of thermonuclear energy similar to the corona of a star.

This creates, in effect, a solar flare.

Depending on the technology used to capture it--magnetic bottling, micro-singularity sinks or thermally receptive panels--the amount of energy taken out can be adjusted.  Depending on the number of the fuel pellets in use and the number of arrays in tandem, energy can be gathered with only the uranium in the universe as the upper limit.

**Exotic Matter Fuels - Negative Energy and/or Negative Mass Exotic Matter and Contained Singularities:**

Per elementary warp field theory (including humanity’s preliminary concept-only work by Alcubierre, et. al. ), the warping of space curvature requires exotic matter with negative energy density.  Though such matter can exist, it is not something that can be created by natural processes, including black holes or neutron stars. It is, however something that can be created by high intensity, repeated insult to specially prepared normal matter via a mixture of singularity compression (as in white sand creation) and neutron particle bombardment to exercise any imperfections.

Once created, “neg-en” matter is bottled electromagnetically and typically wrapped in neutron matter at least one solid particle layer thick.  This is most often done as a slow-moving crystalline structure that, like glass, moves so slowly as to seem solid. It is struck with energy bleed from white sand to excite it and thus warp space time.

Similarly, any contained singularity power cells are the result of compressing highly dense matter repeatedly until a small singularity occurs.  The singularity is prevented from becoming destructive by its instability and for basic safety reasons, it must be contained in a neg-en, neg-mass bottle so that if needed, it can be instantly destroyed.  These power sources are extremely long lived and well suited for single-purpose hardware such as weapons, remote probe power supplies and automated outposts.

**Fuel and Ship Design:**

As the size of field and power of the warping effect needed to move a ship increases with the mass, warp-capable ships are, in essence, subject to a similar effect to “tyranny” in chemical rockets.  The more fluid packed into the coils, the more neutron matter needed to shield it, larger the ship’s mass and the more impracticable it becomes to generate enough power to move.

Ships with a high power to mass ratio not only move the _fastest,_ they move most _efficiently_.  In strictly conceptual terms, the ideal warp capable vessel would contain a single pilot, a computer, a powerful white sand core or small singularity to excite the coils, over-powered warp coils, life support and no more a few kilograms worth of cargo.  With advanced enough materials and miniaturization particularly the hull alloys and fields needed to shield the crew and cargo, such a vessel could theoretically be five meters long, if not smaller.  It would be extremely fast and need refueling only in terms of centuries--perhaps longer--rather than months or years.

Warp-capable armor such as Kryptonian navies and Daxamite special forces groups use is not considered a starship because it lacks onboard intelligence with the ability to self pilot and typically relies on the pilot in large part, for warp field generation.  In layman's terms is the difference between an airplane, which adds power, and an efficient hanglider or parachute which merely conserves and uses it.

**The Advent of Negative Energy, Negative Mass Exotic Matter:**

More recent experiments at Krypton’s Propulsion Institute and Colu Prime's Interstellar Projects managed to create a negative energy, negative mass (neg-en, neg-mass) form of exotic matter, providing massively increased efficiency and enabling--potentially--exciting new applications such as traversing wormholes, which would require seeding with neg-mass exotic matter to prevent collapse.  

In the last eight thousand years, a small percentage of operable ships have been retrofitted with neg-en, neg-mass coils and in some cases, plating layers.  Should a non-stable wormhole be discovered, galactic law dictates that the ship--civilian, scientific or military--enter it and attempt to stabilize it. As great as the risks are, the potential benefits such as a better understanding of time loops and alternate universes and possible first contact with other universes or timelines are seen to outweigh it.


End file.
